Kallikantzaroi: The Saw, the Tree and the Holy Water

In many Greek villages, the twelve nights between Christmas and Epiphany were the most dangerous of the year. The fire on the hearth was not allowed to go out. Shutters were fastened early, and people tried not to be on the road after dark. The reason was the kallikantzaroi: goblins who climb up from under the earth for the Twelve Days, the Dodekaímero, and go back down only when the waters are blessed. They are not ancient myth. No classical author mentions them, and the earliest detailed description dates from the seventeenth century. But they belong to the same landscape as the old stories, and this entry files them for what they are: a folk tradition, recorded from village speakers by collectors who took it seriously.

Names that change from valley to valley

The usual modern form is kalikántzaros, plural kalikántzaroi, also spelled with a double l. Collectors found that almost every district had its own variant. The folklorist N. G. Politis, whose Paradoseis (Traditions) of 1904 gathered legends from across the Greek-speaking world, printed tales of them from district after district, and the collectors who followed him noted a crowd of local forms, among them karkántzaroi and karkántzaloi, and compounds such as lykokántzaroi, with lýkos, “wolf”, at the front. In Cyprus they are the kalikántzari. The descriptions vary as much as the names. Some places imagined them taller than houses, others no bigger than children; most agreed they were dark and shaggy, often lame, cross-eyed or one-eyed, with the legs or hooves of goats or donkeys.

Nobody agrees on where the name comes from. Nineteenth-century scholars proposed a link with kalós, “fine”, and kéntauros, “centaur”, and the Cambridge scholar J. C. Lawson argued at length in 1910 that the kallikantzaroi were the ancient centaurs living on in village memory. Others point to the Turkish karakoncolos and the karakondzhul of Bulgarian folklore, names for similar winter goblins among Greece’s neighbours. The question is still open, and every proposed etymology has its critics.

The tree that holds up the world

The best-known story about them is also the strangest. For most of the year, the kallikantzaroi live below ground, where they work at a single task: cutting through the trunk of the great tree that holds up the earth. They saw, hack and gnaw at it all year round. By Christmas only a sliver of wood is left, and one more push would bring the world down.

At that moment Christ is born, and the goblins, in their excitement or by some compulsion, abandon the tree and swarm up to the surface. For twelve nights they run through the villages and forget the work below. While they are away, the trunk heals. In some tellings it simply grows back; in others the birth itself makes it whole. When they return after Epiphany, they find the tree as thick as ever, and the sawing begins again.

The story turns the calendar into a cycle of near-disaster and rescue. The world nearly falls every winter, and every winter the feast saves it. Readers who know Norse myth will think of the creatures gnawing at the roots of the world-ash Yggdrasil. The resemblance is real, but no line of descent between the two has been shown, and the Greek tradition stands on its own.

Twelve nights of defence

Above ground, the kallikantzaroi were nuisances more than killers. They came down chimneys and in through any gap, put out or fouled the fire, spoiled food and wine, frightened travellers, rode people like horses and made them dance until they dropped. They were afraid of fire, of holy things and of the first cockcrow, when they had to flee.

Households answered with a set of defences that varied from place to place. A large log, often called the Christóxylo, the “Christ-wood”, was lit at Christmas and kept burning through the Twelve Days, so that nothing could come down the chimney. Some threw old shoes or salt on the fire, trusting the smell or the crackle to drive the visitors off. In some places the jawbone of the Christmas pig was hung behind the door. A sieve or colander left on the doorstep was a well-known trick: the goblin must stop and count its holes, but cannot say “three”, a holy number, and so starts again at one, over and over, until the cock crows. Houses were marked with the sign of the cross and sprinkled with water and basil.

The blessing that sends them home

The season ends with water. On the eve of Epiphany, in many villages, the priest went from house to house with a cross and a sprig of basil, dipping it in holy water and sprinkling every room, the animals in their stalls and the stores of food. This small blessing, the mikrós agiasmós, was the signal for the goblins to leave. Collectors recorded a rhyme put in their mouths as they fled.

Run, let us run, here comes the priest with his sprig of basil and his dripping water!

Village rhyme for Epiphany Eve, oral tradition (our rendering)

In Cyprus, on the same eve, households toss the first loukoumádes, little honey fritters, onto the roof for the departing kalikántzari, a parting gift to keep them sweet. Then, on 6 January, comes the Great Blessing of the Waters, the Mégas agiasmós, at the feast the Greek Church calls the Theophánia or simply ta Fóta, “the Lights”. After the service, the priest throws a cross into the sea, a river or a reservoir, and young men dive into the winter water to bring it back. Folk belief held that during the Twelve Days the waters were “unbaptized”, ta abáptista, and that the kallikantzaroi had power until the blessing was made. Once the cross has touched the water, their season is over and they go back down to the tree.

Folklorists such as Politis, Lawson and, later, G. A. Megas, whose Greek Calendar Customs (1958) describes these observances, were tempted to look for ancient roots. One tempting parallel is the Athenian festival of the Anthesteria, whose close was marked by a proverb preserved in Byzantine lexicons: “Out of the door, Keres, the Anthesteria is over” (our rendering). Some read the word as Kēres, spirits of the dead, set loose for the festival and then sent away; others read Kāres, Carians, meaning household slaves. Either way, it shows an old Greek habit of opening a dangerous season and then formally closing it. Descent cannot be proved, and the kallikantzaroi need no classical pedigree to be worth recording.

They also have relatives in this index. Like Persephone, they live below the earth and come up on a fixed schedule; like the grinning face in the Medusa file, they are met with protective objects at the threshold. Their row in the Catalogue is the last one in the drawer.