The terrifying side to Christmas

Kalikantzaroi, the Cyprus goblins, no longer have the impact they once did

Trolls, goblins, elves and fairies, all remnants of pagan beliefs around the world, often make their appearance during the days of Christmas.

Santa’s elves – associated with making the toys in Santa’s workshop and taking care of his reindeer – are always depicted as helpful creatures, while trolls and goblins are traditionally ugly, at best mischievous, at worst terrifying.

In Cyprus and Greece, Kalikantzaroi are the local goblins, and couldn’t be more different from elves.

“At their best, they are ‘beautiful centaurs’ (the translation of the Greek word). At their worst, they are small, dark creatures with a human aspect but animal parts – rat tails or donkey ears or monkey arms or boar tusks. Their eyes burn with a devilish fire, but they don’t see well. They smell terrible, no doubt in part due to their diet: insects and frogs. They are mischievous and impish, like Irish leprechauns,” is how novelist Hannah Fielding described them.

Legend has it they are creatures which live beneath a tree connecting our world to the underworld.

The Kalikantzaroi spend their entire year beneath that tree, sawing their way into the outer world. They manage to succeed, and escape during the 12 days of Christmas, a period stretching from December 25 to January 6.

They come out to the world during this period because Christ has not yet been baptised and cannot protect humanity from evil. The households lie unprotected, but since the goblins are afraid of fire, people keep them away by burning logs, incense and even old shoes.

To remove a Kalikantzaros the housewife needs to give them sausages and pancakes to eat, otherwise they will spit on a fire to put them out. Worse, they are prone to carry off babies not yet baptised. On the eve of epiphany, January 6, they disappear until the next year.

Should we be telling our children about such mythical creatures? With care, perhaps.

“Unfortunately, fantasies of ghosts and goblins can also come with some scary imagery, followed by the inevitable fears of monsters that might be hiding under the bed. The reason children have these vivid fantasies—both the fun and scary ones—is that they have active imaginations, and, especially in the preschool years, may have trouble distinguishing between what’s real and imaginary,” said Vanessa LoBue, associate professor of psychology and director of the Child Study Centre at Rutgers University.

“My concern is that these young humans who will later on be members of society often identify with the heroes of the story they are being told. This can be good and bad,” says creator and trainer of social skills programmes for children in Cyprus, Tatiana Shukuroglou.

“Good, because we can pass to their beautiful sponge-like absorbing minds the correct messages that will help them become the people we wish to have around us. Bad, for the exact same reason – that we might pass to them all the wrong standards and characteristics we don’t wish on our citizens.”

She said that if she were to create a story using the Kalikantzaroi, she would be using the fact that their ugly, scary looking appearance is not something that should matter on how they perform.

“I would present them to the children as heroes that go around helping children. In fact, our Manadoob® programme for self-esteem has very similar properties,” she said, referring to the emotional learning system for children she teaches.

“The Manadoob are a bunch of mischievous looking characters, a mixture of different animals, that look scary, but once you meet them and realise their character qualities you cannot tell if they are ugly or not. The Manadoob present themselves only to special children and they assign them as their helpers, to help other children.”

In many countries trolls and goblins are less scary than Kalikantzaroi.

“In other countries they are a positive thing but not in Cyprus,” Maria Demosthenous who has a son of kindergarten age said.

Though she was not brought up with tales of Cypriot Kalikantzaroi and said this tradition is not something her son is learning about in kindergarten, she remembers troll dolls from the 90s, which were very popular and cute, a type of plastic doll with furry up-combed hair.

“They were invented in Denmark and for sure had a positive connotation, children could see their magic in animated films. They were happy little things, believed to bring good luck.”

We may not have a choice in the matter, as other forces largely determine what we experience come Christmas.

“I would say that the imagination like dreams and ‘beliefs’ about the supernatural have been globalised, which in effect means they also have come under western hegemony and become part of consumer capitalism, meaning now it is all about Santa Claus of course and the whole consumption frenzy,” said professor Yiannis Papadakis from the University of Cyprus.

“Santa Claus, rather than Kalikantzaroi, etc, is inextricably bound with the overtly consumerist US culture which in many places including Cyprus has become dominant. His colours have been influenced by those of Coca Cola, he carries material goods and represents the embodiment of consumption in his own plump physique.”

The overwhelming role of Father Christmas may be one of the reasons that the distinction between goblins and trolls is not clear, with some sources saying the difference is that unlike goblins, trolls come from Nordic folklore, while others claim goblins are small and trolls come in various sizes, and yet others believe that one or the other is nastier.

Let’s not forget the internet, which creates even more diverse definitions. Probably what comes to mind for most of the younger generation when it comes to trolls is an internet troll, a person who “intentionally upsets people by posting inflammatory, extraneous or off-topic messages in an online community such as a blog”.

Not such a far cry from Kalikantzaroi, perhaps, and spreading their nastiness 365 days a year.