Was Christmas better in the old days? How did we celebrate, and what was important to us?

Once upon a time, Christmas wasn’t this way. Especially in Cyprus.

Granted, Easter has always been the biggest celebration in this part of the world. And winter is all about New Year. But in the last decade or so, perhaps influenced by the West, our Christmas has become a Very Big Thing: endless gifts, a full family dinner, and elaborate decorations.

It’s the same all over the world. Even the most poignant ads on the British telly (you know, the ones that make you cry buckets!) are just leveraging emotion-led spending – on food and clothes, perfumes and presents.

It wasn’t always like this. When I was little, my mum told me that her childhood Christmases consisted of a brief walk in the snow, gnawing on a leg of pigeon. But that was the UK. (And, with the benefit of hindsight, it occurs to me she might have exaggerated.) What we’re interested in is Cyprus. What, one wonders, was an island Christmas like decades past?

“Special!” declares 69-year-old Kyriacos Charalambous. “It was much more special.

A retired doctor who grew up in Nicosia, Kyriacos recalls Christmases past as times of “community, of family. There was so much excitement – not just because we were children, but because it was such a wonderful time of year.

“It was cold – colder than now, I think. There were lights in the streets, a Christmas tree at home – most people in the city had trees; we got them from the mountains. And everybody came together: going to church, then eating all day long!”

Kyriacos recalls the entire family arriving on the doorstep – “smiling and laughing. Back then, travel wasn’t so easy; so it was fun to be with your cousins for a whole day. Of course we saw them again at New Year, and Epiphany – it was a special time. And more fun than Easter, which was serious and religious; Christmas was only happiness and joy.

“Now,” he adds, “it’s different. Yes, we’re adults and we have more problems! But Christmas back then was better. The lights, the trees, the shops – all that started in December, not October. And that made it much more special. More important.”

Argyroulla Astin agrees. At 73, the former restaurateur has lived in the UK for many years. Yet she recalls the Christmases of her youth in Avgorou “as if they were yesterday!

“Back then, December 25 was not a major celebration. We did all go to church – the teacher would slap us if we didn’t! But there were no lights, no decorations in the village. But what there was,” she reveals, “was community…”

Argyroulla talks about the shared ovens in which the village cooked their Christmas dishes; the piglet each house kept in the backyard throughout the year.

“It was my job to look after our piglet. And when it was time to slaughter it, I’d hide under the bed. My father would take his special knife and…” she pauses. “70 years on, I can still hear its scream!”

However, after 40 days of fasting – “we all did it, even the children: no animal products at all” – the meat was very welcome, as was the afelia, duck, lamb or chicken.

“We often had a turkey too; my father worked for the British army, so we adopted some of the English traditions,” she recalls. “We were the only house with a Christmas tree – my father and I would drive out to the mountains to cut one down. And we decorated it with glass baubles and little presents. In those days, people gave money, not gifts. But in our house, we had little dolls hung on the tree; my sisters and I would fight like cats over which one we got!”

Argyroulla misses such traditions. “Families in Cyprus don’t seem to get together so much anymore – someone’s on holiday in the Maldives; someone else is visiting their son in the States. A few years ago, I was back in Avgorou again for December, staying with my aunt. ‘Where is everyone?’ I asked her. And she told me they don’t meet up like before.

“It’s different in the diaspora, though,” she smiles. “I think Cypriots abroad have kept up the old traditions. On the 25th, there will be 15 of us here at my house in Manchester – four different generations around multiple tables. That’s the old way of Christmas,” she says. “And I think it’s the best way.”

68-year-old artist Katie Sabry grew up in Kyrenia. And she, too, remembers Christmases that were very different.    

“People weren’t well off back then: there was no spare money for gifts and trees and fireworks. You’d hardly see any decorations – just in the European houses, not in the Greek Cypriot or Turkish Cypriot homes. And I certainly don’t remember my friends at school giving or receiving gifts.

“My sister and I did get little presents,” she adds. “One year I got a beautiful doll’s pram – I dressed up our big black and white cat and wheeled him around for days! But that was because my mum was English, and she’d kept some of her traditions: we’d have a turkey, or go out to the hills. I remember Christmas 1970 we went to Salamis for a picnic!”

Living among a mixed population, Christmas wasn’t a big thing, she adds. “And anyway, it’s always been New Year that’s the major winter holiday in Cyprus: a big party and the vasilopita at midnight.”

Today, Katie finds she wants to avoid the celebrations. “A Cyprus Christmas past was always a quiet affair – even when we moved to Limassol in the 80s, everything was still low-key. Now, although I live in Psematismenos, the explosion of commercialism is ever-present. It takes over our island from October.

“Black Friday?” she asks incredulously. “We don’t even celebrate Thanksgiving here! I miss the old celebrations in Kyrenia,” she sighs. “Just a simple family gathering and then a swim in the sea. That was the perfect Cyprus Christmas!”