Halloween Isn't Big in Greece, But Costumes Are.

 

Jeff—Saturday

In past years I’ve generally ended my six months in Greece about this time.  My reasoning was simple.  Returning to New York City on Halloween meant that many of the same characters I’d grown used to seeing on Mykonos would be out in force on the streets of Manhattan.

Besides, I wasn’t missing out on any Greek ghouls or goblins (at least not of the unelected sort), because Halloween is virtually non-existent in Greece, except by expats for their children and some places catering to tourists.  That’s not meant to suggest Greeks don’t like to party in costume—the ancients invented it.  Modern Greeks do it big time during Apokries, a three-week festival preceding Greek Orthodox Lent (think February), also known as Carnival.  I’ve described those festivities of Lent before (It’s Mardi Gras Time in Greece), but today I thought I’d concentrate on the costumes.

As reported a few years back on a website called Hubpages :

Adults dress up and throw parties or frequent the town cafes and bars dressed in masks, wigs and funny, scary or risqué costumes. For example men often dress up as outrageous women with high heels, short skirts, huge inflated false boobs and an overdose of lipstick, blusher and false eyelashes. Others may dress up as priests or wear masks of well known politicians, actors or film characters. They often carry props such as plastic battons, streamers, confetti, tins of foam, whistles and clackers; all adding to the rowdy party atmosphere.

Children - even babies - enjoy the fun too of course... masquerade parties are held in villages and schools for the young ones, who dress up in all manner of costumes from witches and warlocks to telly tubbies and angels.

Masqueraders use their disguises and masks to call anonymously at the houses of friends and neighbours, who try to guess their identities.

Cakes and sweets are offered to the masquerading children on these house calls, or shots of whisky or the local fire water to adults in disguise. This is usually a ploy to entice the masquerader to remove his mask to uncover his identity!

 So similarly there is a kind of trick or treating here in Greek Apokries, but ..... they get to do both. The treat is offered - the sweet, cake or whisky, but is then usually followed by the trick - throwing confetti, streamers or foam all around the house (yes I know it's tame, and just in fun, but you try cleaning up tons of the stuff from your carpet!).

At the end of the three-week period Apokries culminates with the Grand Carnival Parades which are held all across Greece. The largest and most famous of which is held in Patras. There are also large parades held in Athens and in Rethymnon, Crete, amongst many others.

But back in NYC there are other forms of celebration, most famously the 51st annual Greenwich Village Halloween Parade.

But the costume celebration I most favor these days takes place away from the heart of Manhattan, and features a lovely young lady who's halloween haul always amazes me.

May all your goblins remain imaginary ... and unelected.

—Jeff

PS.  For those in the US, don't forget to set your clocks back an hour at 12:01 AM Sunday.

The Lost Weekend

 

The World Acupuncture Conference is a very prestigious event. Like Bouchercon, it moves around but generally stays in the far east.

In 2024, it came to London to a hotel that looked like it was near Windsor. It wasn’t. I’ve never been to Windsor, never seen the castle, but I thought it would be nice to go and witness the long walk which you might remember from the funeral of Queen Elizabeth 2nd. I didn’t get to do any of that.

I do British Medical Acupuncture, the sort of acupuncture that British doctors and physiotherapists use. It’s much more trigger point/dry needling than bathing the feet in lotus leaves and sticking 7 inch needles through the neck type of acupuncture. The acupuncture we do is very medical based and with proven meta data.

The man in charge of BMAS is a ex-army, probably ex-Sandhurst officer, battlefield acupuncture specialist. As you would presume, he has very good posture and is very precise in everything. Events that he runs go like clockwork.

I still don’t understand who was running the international conference. It started off badly for us when the taxi from Heathrow very confidently dropped us off at the Radisson Blu rather than the Radisson Red. So that was a long walk through the industrial wasteland that surrounds Heathrow airport.

                                              

It was an expensive hotel with no breakfast and even less charm. It was a long walk to go anywhere. There was no way out, no where else to go to eat rather than paying half the GDP of the US economy for a tiny bowl of cheesy pasta. Alan set off with a credit card and a sat nav on his phone to get supplies. He hasn’t been seen since.

                                                 

Fuelled by sweeties bought coming through Heathrow, I attended the opening ceremony of the WAC. It was hard to describe but I shall try. Very large hall with some 800 people in it, maybe 10% European. There was a top table facing the stage, white tablecloth and flowers etc. On the stage was a lectern and more flowers. Behind that was a screen. To the left and the right were very big screens reminiscent of a rock concert.

The process went like this. Somebody talked. We had simultaneous translation in our ears. Nobody really said anything apart from how good it was to be here. Orr maybe they did but we didn’t get that translated. But the 12 five minute intro slots of the opening ceremony slowly crept to 2 hours and beyond. Somebody would be introduced. They would stand up at the top table and bow to the audience and then walk to the side of the top table and bow again. While this was going on there was music, the same music used by the Soviet gymnasts in 1972 during the floor exercise. The speaker would then walk on to the stage and there was more bowing, and then they would stand behind the lectern, the music stopped abruptly and the speaker disappeared behind the foliage of the floral display.

At this point they handed over the USB stick to the technical person who then fiddled about with it for another 2 or 3 minutes with all sorts of interesting pieces of their desktop appearing on the screen. Eventually the correct powerpoint presentation would appear. The  top half of it in their native language, the lower half was in English. Or, it might have been, but it wasn’t actually visible to anybody in the audience. I thought the big screens at either side would have shown the presentations also but alas they were showing the faces of the people at the top table as they nodded wisely. From then on it just ran later and later. One of my favourite lecturers in the world was supposed to give a 40 minute lecture on the degranulation of the mast cell. He was told he had 10 minutes.

                                               

After lunch all the lecturers were either Korean or Chinese and there was no translation. So all the Europeans went up to their hotel room to watch Endeavour. And it all cost an awful lot of money.

I think my favourite lecturer was also slightly perturbed at not being able to deliver the lecture that he was supposed to. He’s Scandinavian. He held up his USB stick and said ‘We are not doing this as it takes too long.’ He is a cartoonist as well as a Professor of Medicine, he knows a lot about neuro physiology and uses his cartoons as a teaching method. So with the camera on the lectern, he quickly drew a big brain and wrote underneath it, “the male brain”. Then he drew a very small brain and wrote under that “the female brain”. He said the big male brain was very busy and indicated that ¾ of it was constantly thinking at a very high rate, mostly about women and football. Whereas the female brain worked at a lower, but more consistent rate, putting right all that was wrong with the world.

                                                     

Nobody laughed.

I guess it was lost in translation.