Agios Vasilis Is Coming to Town

THESSALONIKI, Greece — The butcher didn’t have any turkeys so we were going to have boar. Then he didn’t have any boar so we settled for hare. 

It tasted nothing like rabbit, according to the connoisseurs among us. Gamier, they said, but I don’t find an adjective that describes a thing as itself very illuminating. It’s like saying a lemon tastes lemony. 

Hare and sides and good company above all, it was a fine feast, and I was grateful to fellow Americans Neena and Shreesh for playing host so we could have a semblance of a Thanksgiving so far from our nears and dears.

Thus did we kick off our holiday season in a foreign land. We thought about flying home for a week or so, but where to? State College, where we live? Colorado, to be with one branch of our blended family, including 16-month-old grandbaby Penelope, who calls me Papi when I appear onscreen? British Columbia, to be with another branch, including 3-month-old grandbaby Elleka?

Contemplating the time, expense and fatigue involved in seeing everyone convinced us that we’d rather be homesick. Specifically, we would rather be homesick on a Greek island.

I used to think it was sad to feel homesick. Now I know it’s sadder not to miss people and places. It means one has no emotional attachments. In our case, it would mean that there’s no real home to return to when our time here is over.

So, the holidays, Hellenic-style: 

The Greeks, unsurprisingly, do not commemorate the 17th-century “encounter” between Europeans and Native Americans. They do, surprisingly, hold Black Friday sales the day after Thanksgiving. I considered joining the throngs and buying and shipping gifts home, but in the global economy, there’s not much you can get here that you can’t get from a certain e-tail behemoth. 

And if you don’t want to do business with the behemoth, you can go to one of the many websites that sell all things Greek. That sounds like cheating until you consider that the cost of shipping an item back to the States probably exceeds the cost of the item itself.

I was hoping to at least buy Ts and hoodies emblazoned — in Greek characters, preferably — with the name of the school that has borrowed me from Penn State for the year. Φοργετ αβουτ ιτ. There is no Aristotle University apparel. I should take a pile of shirts to a silkscreener, set up a table on campus and hawk them myself.

If you’re wondering how Ari U compares to Penn State, let me put it this way: The whole time I’ve been here I have neither heard the call, “Είμαστε!” (We are!), nor the response, “Αριστοτελειο Πανεπιστημιο!” (Aristotle University!). I haven’t seen anyone doing backflips in a furry suit, either. 

Little wonder this place didn’t get any votes for Best Student Section, European Division.

A Penn State colleague asked me if there’s anything like the Greek system here in the land that gave the world the alpha and the omega. Of course, I said, only here they call it the American system and they hang Latin letters on the pediments above the doors of their houses. 

Actually, there are no fraternity houses here. No intercollegiate sports either. And no Woo people. This may best be explained by the fact that the students’ beverage of choice is coffee.

But back to the holidays. Along with Black Friday sales, the Greeks have embraced the Christmas tree, though in this seafaring land it’s more traditional to string lights on boats than on trees. 

Aristotle Square, the grand public space in the center of the city, has a Rockefeller Center-style tree surrounded by stacks of plastic cubes, some of which have disco balls floating in them.

My Thessalonian friends find the decorations cringe-worthy. I try to console them. If you can’t get kitschy at Christmas, when can you?

And speaking of kitsch: If I thought I’d get a break from American Christmas music by spending the holidays in Greece, I was sorely mistaken: As we strolled through Thessaloniki’s Christmas village — faux-rustic junk-food huts on one side of us, elves in headsets inviting children to an audience with Agios Vasilis (their St. Nick) on the other — Elvis crooned “Blue Christmas” at us, just as he would have if we were at the King of Prussia Mall. 

And as for Hanukkah: At our house you’d have thought it was the Feast of the Potato. My resourceful wife improvised a menorah by jamming candles into foil-wrapped baking spuds; I cranked out latkes. Best batch I ever made, though I remain phobic about deep-frying. To celebrate the solstice, we lit every candle in the house. 

No chance of a white Christmas hereabouts, except on Mount Olympus. The wind is singing and there are whitecaps on the Aegean Sea. Undaunted, the Thessalonians spent Christmas Eve grilling meats and circle-dancing to brass bands while their children went door to door singing carols and playing triangles.

It was all very merry and bright.

Russell Frank teaches journalism in Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications. He is spending the 2019-2020 academic year as a Fulbright scholar in Thessaloniki, Greece.