Kallikantzaros

The Kallikantzaros dwells deep beneath the earth, in caverns and tunnels where no light reaches, spending the bulk of every year in a single obsessive task. It works with saw and axe upon the trunk of the World Tree, the great pillar that holds the earth aloft and keeps the cosmos from collapsing into chaos. The creature is not alone in this labour. The Kallikantzaroi, the plural form, work in bands under a chieftain called the Great Kallikantzaros, quarrelling among themselves but united in their destructive purpose. They saw and gnaw through the months, and just as the final fibres of the trunk are about to give way, as the earth itself teeters on the brink of collapse, something happens. Christmas dawns above. The sun reaches its turning point at the winter solstice, and the call of the surface world becomes irresistible. The Kallikantzaroi abandon their tools, leave their saws stuck in the wood, and scramble upward through cracks in the earth, through caves, through chimneys, and through any dark opening that leads to the world of mortals. They are driven by an ancient compulsion to rise during the twelve days of Christmas, the period called the Dodekaimeron that stretches from December 25 to January 6, the Feast of Epiphany.

When they reach the surface, the Kallikantzaroi are a sight to freeze the blood. They are small, ranging from the size of a walnut to that of a small child, though some regional tales describe them as large as men or even giants. Their skin is black with soot from the underground and the chimneys they climb. Their eyes burn red in the darkness. Their ears are long and donkey-like, their tongues hang out, and their limbs are twisted and animalistic. Most have goat legs ending in cloven hooves, or horse-like legs, or monkey-like arms. They are covered in coarse black hair, and their nails are elongated into claws. Some are one-eyed, some are blind, some are lame. They are almost always male, and their sexual organs are often grotesquely prominent. They are not beautiful creatures, despite the possible etymology of their name from the Greek words kalos, meaning beautiful, and kantzaros, possibly linked to kentauros, meaning centaur. The name may be ironic, or it may be a euphemism born of fear, the same impulse that leads people to call dangerous things by flattering names to avoid summoning them.

For twelve days, the Kallikantzaroi run riot through the villages and towns of Greece. They enter houses through chimneys, which is why the hearth fire must be kept burning continuously throughout the Dodekaimeron. They extinguish flames, urinate on hearths, sour milk in storage vessels, befoul wine and water, spill ashes across clean floors, break furniture, and devour the Christmas pork. They are boisterous, quarrelsome, and fond of wine, and they dance lewdly with nereids, the beautiful sea-nymphs who attend Poseidon, the god of the sea. They are drawn to the scent of roasting meat and honey, and they will swarm a house where food is being prepared. They are not truly murderous, though they can be terrifying. On the island of Chios, in the mid-17th century, the scholar Leo Allatios recorded tales of Kallikantzaroi that slashed victims with sharp claws and sat upon them, demanding the answer to a riddle: "Tow or lead?" If the victim answered "tow," a clump of hemp fibre, they were spared. If they answered "lead," they were crushed by tremendous weight and beaten half to death. But these darker tales are rare. Most of the time, the Kallikantzaroi are simply pests, the supernatural equivalent of a gang of drunken vandals.

The Greeks developed an elaborate system of defenses against these creatures. The most famous is the sieve trick. A colander or sieve is left by the fire or near the chimney. The Kallikantzaros, compelled by a supernatural obsession with counting, will begin to count the holes. It can count one, two, but it cannot pronounce three. Three is a sacred number, and the attempt to say it causes the creature to start over from the beginning. It counts and counts, and by the time it realizes it has been tricked, the cock has crowed and the sun has risen, and the Kallikantzaros must flee. Other defenses include burning foul-smelling substances in the fire, such as old shoes or salt, which produce acrid smoke that repels the creatures. Garlic is hung at doorways. A pig's lower jaw is hung behind the front door or inside the chimney, its apotropaic power warding off the goblins. A black cross is drawn with charcoal on the door on Christmas Eve. In some villages, bonfires called martyres are lit outdoors to illuminate the night and scare the light-fearing creatures away. On the island of Zakynthos, it was believed that a child born on Christmas Eve would eventually become a Kallikantzaros, the product of a sinful union that dared to conceive on the same day as the Virgin Mary. Such children were said to transform into goblins during the Christmas season once they reached adulthood, and protective measures included binding babies with garlic or exposing their feet to fire to burn away the toenails that would become claws.

On January 6, the Feast of Epiphany, the priest blesses the waters, and the power of the holy water drives the Kallikantzaroi back underground. They scramble down through the chimneys and cracks, retreating to their caverns, and when they reach the World Tree they find that it has healed itself during their absence. The trunk is whole again, and they must start their sawing from the beginning. This cycle repeats every year, an eternal Sisyphean punishment that binds the creatures to the rhythm of the Christian calendar. Scholars trace the Kallikantzaros to the ancient satyrs and sileni, the wild half-man, half-goat companions of Dionysus, the god of wine and ecstasy, who were themselves chthonic spirits of the earth. The masquerades of the ancient Dionysia, the winter festival of Dionysus, involved masked figures in grotesque costumes, jingling bells, and visiting door to door, antics that may have inspired the later goblin lore. The Kallikantzaros is thus a survival of pre-Christian paganism, transformed by Orthodox Christianity into a demon of the Yuletide season, a creature that embodies the tension between the old religion and the new, between chaos and order, between the darkness of winter and the returning light.