Celebrating the joy of being Cypriot

Through food and culture, a YouTube channel looks at what it means to be from the island. Eleni Philippou meets the woman behind it

Christmas is a time of family and tradition, of gathering around a large table of food and devouring the season’s delights. And there are plenty of them! Though many of them do not actually originate from Cyprus, they have become part of our Christmas tradition. But how many people have stopped to think about the roots of our adopted traditional food, local customs and truly celebrated the joy of their origins?

A Cypriot YouTube channel that launched in March of 2021 has embarked on a journey to discover Cypriot roots, get hands-on with what it means to be Cypriot – whatever that may be – and document some traditional ways before they disappear. Joy of Origins is a diary of Cypriot stories shared through food and crafts. It is Chara Nicolaou’s personal project that she hopes can be a point of reference for both Cypriots and foreigners.

As a 27-year-old architect and creative, questioning her origins and identity began in Chara’s years abroad. Studying in Strasburg and then living in China, she often found herself having to explain to new international friends what being Cypriot meant and what local traditions were, which made her reconsider the story she was telling.

“I felt that it was so hard to describe,” she says, “it was easy to say I’m from Cyprus but then it was hard to really explain what Cypriot meant. And I was most of the time turning to clichés like talking about sandy beaches and sunny weather or even the Cyprus problem. But I felt that this is a story that someone else told me, and I’m repeating it, it’s not really who I am. How do I feel as a Cypriot? What’s my identity, what’s my origins?”

Around the same time, Chara lost one of her grandparents and soon after, her other grandfather had a stroke. Losing this first-hand access to the past made her realise that the knowledge the older generation has won’t always be around and to learn it and remember it she needed to do something.

Her time spent abroad and now with a Chinese husband made her reflect on her Cypriot roots. She found similarities with so many other cultures and a desire to return to a simpler way of doing things. A year into her return to the island, she began the YouTube channel, interviewing family members and researching online to make memoirs of Cypriot traditions and customs through film.

“I do this through food,” she smiles, “because, for me, food is a basic need, it’s something that I feel connects people. Because when you just talk about food, when you see similarities and say, ‘oh, we eat the same thing’, it can really create connections.”

So, Chara shares Cypriot recipes, some well-known, others not so much, but ones you’d find in villages. She conceptualises, films and edits everything herself, sometimes spending weeks to finish a vlog waiting for good weather or a cooking process to mature. Her videos include how to make kattimeri, or pomegranate liqueur and dishes with oranges and field mustard.

An important aspect of the channel is showing the preparation and the collection of the food. She’ll often film herself cutting fruit and mustard leaves from her mother’s garden, collecting wood to light the stove and storing food in traditional woven baskets and wooden bowls.

Showing this aspect of the cooking process is just as important to Chara. “Origins also has a double sense for me. One part is origins as Cypriot identity but another important element is the origins of food. Like where oranges come from, for example, where nuts come from, maybe some people have never seen in their life where chickpeas grow. This was a very important element of Cypriot culture because some years ago, most of the people were farmers, growing vegetables and all these things. But nowadays most of us don’t know how to do it.”

Her videos show each step of the way. Picking seasonal produce – because that is also important to Chara – and taking the time to make a recipe from scratch. Many of the recipes she features are a first for her too, explained by her grandparents or aunts, researched online and finally attempted.

The channel has allowed Chara to spend more time with her grandparents, ask them questions and listen, yet explaining this journey to them hasn’t been so straightforward. “Their generation is very interesting to observe,” she says smiling. “They are not used to this kind of media. My grandmother likes cooking programmes on TV so she expects something in that tone.

“It’s different because for them,” she adds, “this was their life so they don’t understand the need to go back to them because they feel that they never left them in the first place.”

But for Chara and many other young adults growing up in a saturated globalised world, going back to our roots is a challenge. Joy of Origins wishes to invite Cypriots to explore their roots and also introduce another landscape of Cyprus to foreign viewers, beyond touristy stereotypes.

Her latest video transmits the spirit of Christmas from a rural village house, her new home in Ayios Epifanios village. Chara makes melomakarona by the fire and though not originally a Cypriot tradition, the sweets are a staple during the festive period. She uses her aunt’s recipe that includes ground hazelnuts in the mix as her village had plenty of hazelnut trees. She zests oranges, mixes olive oil, cognac, flour and other ingredients to make the honey biscuits.

As we increasingly live in a world of instant gratification, making recipes is illuminating. Waiting until liquids brew, fruits ripen, syrups thicken hides lessons of patience and simplicity. “It’s part of nature,” says Chara, “and by doing this you understand also the importance to slow down a little bit and feel the island.” This has been one of the lessons the channel has taught her but there is one more lesson she takes away from this experience.

“Joy of Origins has brought me to another realisation that in the end, we’re all human… When it comes to origins, I guess Cyprus is very complex. There’s no single answer. That’s what I realised. I realised that my origins are connected to a lot of other origins, and I celebrate that. It is something I cherish.”

Visit Joy of Origins on Youtube to watch Chara’s videos