Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 197, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 September 1917 — HOLIDAY IN GREECE [ARTICLE]

HOLIDAY IN GREECE

Hellenes’ Food Good But Their Dancino Is Monotonous. Men, Women and Children Take Part In the Celebration With No ' Trace of Joviality. It is perhaps the only advantage of being at Saloniki that you can spend two separate Christmases there. Thus it happened that, 13 days after we had eaten our own plum puddings in the mess, we rode away romantically across the mountains for a Christmas day in a Macedonian village, says a writer in the London Times. The cavalcade consisted of three Englishmen—one of them a cosmopolitan genius speaking Greek like his mother tongue —Petros, a Greek orderly and a leading citizen of our village. We sat on pack saddles not unlike "armchairs, with rope stirrups. The reins are a hollow mockery, their only purpose being to affront the pony and make him sulk. Hang them carelessly on the saddle and the surefooted little beast will find his way along the most blood-curdling paths, where deep ravines full of bowlders await the smallest slip. At the end of a pass we emerged into a great plain and saw our village before us amid vineyards and fig trees. We fired a salvo of revolver shots into the air to announce our arrival and were soon shaking hands with a number of men in dark blue-black braided Eton jackets and dark baggy trousers.

Petros was politely determined that we were to lunch with him and soon we were in his house reclining on lovely striped rugs of red, black and yellow and watching the sparks from a wood fire fly up a big chimney. Before lunch, however, came a ceremony which is inevitable on entering any house. The daughter of the house brings a tray on which are small glasses of home-made brandy, an equal number of glasses of water, and a dish of sweet stuff—Turkish delight, chocolates, or in one case, unequivocally British marmalade to be eaten with a spoon. The guest stands up, takes a glass of brandy, drinks It and says “Cheer oh.” Next he takes a sip of water, and last a sweet. After the cognac and the Turkish coffee came lunch. Soup of tripe, rice and vinegar, followed by a duck. The duck had rice with it and a touch of garlic. Of all ducks this was the most palpably divine ever eaten. Then followed dancing in the market place. The market place Is an irregular open space with the invariable plane tree. The spectators gather in the corner*, leaving the middle clear for the dancers, who are divided into two groups. One of these groups revolves slowly round a barrel organ decorated with artificial flowers and grinding out one never ending tune. First come half a dozen young men,' r theiF hands on each other’s shoulders. Next, hand in hand, some twenty or more women with maroon-colored draperies round their heads, dark blue bodices and skirts, and large aprons of vivid scarlet crossed with bars of a darker red and fringed with tassels of bright color. Round their necks are strings of gold coins—dowries to be handed on from mother to daughter, big, thin Magyar coins * mostly, though one woman has a brooch of three English sovereigns. Next to the women come the children, tailing away to the very tiniest little girl, each resplendent in her tiny red apron. The leader performs a very simple step; his Immediate neighbors imitate it, but further down the line the step becomes a mere shuffle, and so they go round and round forever silently and steadily, not apparently bored, but with no trace of joviality. The other group consists of older men who dance far more elaborately l with turnings and twistings and duckings and snapping of fingers. Their leader is a fine, tall fellow with a fierce black mustache and a red sash. He waves a bottle in one hand, assumes poses of humorously exaggerated grace, and has altogether a- debonair and swashbucklering way With him. Having been to America he proudly shouts, “Merry Christmas I Happy New Year.”