The Kallikantzaros
/Ah, Christmastime - presents, feasting, and… little goblins?! We explore this Greek folktale of the Kallikantzaroi, mischievous goblins that come to earth during the 12 Days of Christmas to cause shenanigans. Could your holidays be a little more naughty? We think they could!
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of sexual content, genitalia, religious persecution, urination, violence, death, child endangerment, childbirth, animal death, and depression.
Housekeeping
- Books: Check out our previous book recommendations, guests’ books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books
- Call to Action: Get our Old Wives’ Tale Teller Corduroy Hat!
- Submit Your Urban Legends Audio: Call us! 617-420-2344
Sponsors
- Bookshop.org, where you can now use the code we shared in the midroll to get 10% off your purchase!
Find Us Online
- Website & Transcripts: spiritspodcast.com
- Patreon: patreon.com/spiritspodcast
- Merch: spiritspodcast.com/merch
- Instagram: instagram.com/spiritspodcast
- Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/spiritspodcast.com
- Twitter: twitter.com/spiritspodcast
- Tumblr: spiritspodcast.tumblr.com
Cast & Crew
- Co-Hosts: Julia Schifini and Amanda McLoughlin
- Editor: Bren Frederick
- Music: Brandon Grugle, based on "Danger Storm" by Kevin MacLeod
- Artwork: Allyson Wakeman
- Multitude: multitude.productions
About Us
Spirits is a boozy podcast about mythology, legends, and folklore. Every episode, co-hosts Julia and Amanda mix a drink and discuss a new story or character from a wide range of places, eras, and cultures. Learn brand-new stories and enjoy retellings of your favorite myths, served over ice every week, on Spirits.
Transcript
JOSH: Hey, I'm Josh Spiegle, host of the podcast Lunatic in the Newsroom. If you enjoy journalism that drifts into mild panic, wild overthinking, and a guaranteed nervous breakdown, Lunatic in the Newsroom is for you. It's news like you've never heard before. The only newsroom with a panic button. You'll laugh, you'll cry, and gasps in horror as the show spirals completely out of control. It's not just news, it's emotionally unstable. Lunatic in the Newsroom, listen today.
[theme]
AMANDA: Welcome to Spirits podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week, we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
JULIA: And I'm Julia. And Amanda, at the time that this episode is coming out, it will almost be Christmas time.
AMANDA: Julia, are the Jingle Boys and the Yuletide Men and the Krampus, you know, ne'er-do-wells coming to play mischief tonight?
JULIA: I think they might be, depending on the region that you're in, of course. And, you know, sometimes they come before Christmas, sometimes they come after Christmas. Who can say really when the nature spirits all come and do mischief, right? And I'm really glad you pointed that out, Amanda, because you know, we just came off our Jack Frost and winter spirits episode. And in that, we made a couple references to Christmas time in that episode. But that's because a lot of European cultures, it's really hard to separate winter celebrations from the cultural giant that is Christmas season, you know?
AMANDA: Indeed.
JULIA: To me, it feels like Christmas starts earlier and earlier. I feel like I'm, you know, 50 saying that, but I remember seeing Christmas decorations in late September this year.
AMANDA: Yep, sure did. After Labor Day, I saw some Christmas displays go up and that is wild.
JULIA: In a lot of ways, I am kind of getting sick of the old song and dance every single year. But then, Amanda, as I was doing a little bit of research for another episode, I found a Christmas tradition that I had never heard of before. And it's really been kind of gripping me lately. And I want to tell you all about it.
AMANDA: Is this an episode turducken wherein today's episode was found within the cavity of the bird of another episode?
JULIA: It was, indeed. And that often, I— to be fair, happens a lot here on Spirits, because sometimes you go down a rabbit hole.
AMANDA: Love an episode turducken.
JULIA: So this is folklore, which comes from modern-day Greece, not ancient Greece, but modern-day Greece.
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: And this is the story of the Kallikantzari, which is the plural form of the Kallikantzaros.
AMANDA: Okay. I have no idea what that word means, but I'm excited to find out.
JULIA: I really love this story. It is a story that tied to the 12 days of Christmas, which I think a lot of people mistakenly think is the 12 days leading up to Christmas, but it is, in fact, Christmas Day to January 6th, which is the epiphany, which according to Eastern Christian tradition is when the Magi visited the baby Jesus.
AMANDA: Yes, Eastern Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, they are not getting that twisted. They know all about that period.
JULIA: Also, sometimes this period, the epiphany, is supposed to be when Jesus was baptized as an adult, but it's also sometimes celebrated as the wedding in Cana, where he turned the water into wine. There's a bunch of different festivals.
AMANDA: Something important happened. It was involving Jesus. Don't worry too much.
JULIA: Exactly, exactly. But this is important because the basic explanation for the Kallikantzari is that they are essentially these goblin creatures that, for the majority of the year, spend their time underground. But they get to emerge to the surface on Christmas and they spend those 12 days of Christmas sort of playing pranks and causing mischief.
AMANDA: Incredible.
JULIA: I realize, before we kind of get started, that you probably will want to know what these things look like because goblin is sort of a general term that I'm using, but goblins can look a variety of different ways, depending on who you are and where you are, right?
AMANDA: Do you wanna know what I was picturing, Julia?
JULIA: Please.
AMANDA: The Monsters Inc. man, the short one, what with one eye, one big one.
JULIA: Mike Wazowski?
AMANDA: That's right.
JULIA: Wow, okay. Yep, sure. Okay.
AMANDA: So on a scale of human to Mike Wazowski, where are at here with these goblins?
JULIA: How would I describe it to you and you tell me where I landed on the Mike Wazowski scale? How about that?
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: While goblin is sort of a general term and there are a lot of different ways to describe a goblin, this is also kind of true for the Kallikantzari, which is there is not really a standard appearance, but rather it depends where in Greece you're hearing about the tale. So some areas, they are quite tall and intimidating. Some places, they are small and mischievous, like gremlins or even like the domovoy a little bit. But usually, they are described as being covered in dark hair and sometimes they have animal qualities like dunkier goat ears, monkey arms, goat legs, sometimes just cleft hooves for feet.
AMANDA: Let's just throw in a cleft hoof for the surprise of it.
JULIA: Just for the funsies, right? Also, glowing red eyes is a common trend as well, though sometimes they are described as having only one eye like a cyclops or sometimes even—
AMANDA: What did I say?
JULIA: —no eyes at all.
AMANDA: What did I say, re Mike Wazowski?
JULIA: So that particular one is falling higher on the Mike Wazowski scale than some of the other ones.
AMANDA: Yeah, we're creeping up by a point.
JULIA: And also sometimes, another one of your favorites, Amanda, they will sometimes be described as having backwards feet.
AMANDA: Not something you want to see. Think about your dancing with the hottie. They like— they creep their skirt up a little bit. Oh! That foot is backwards. Don't want that.
JULIA: No, don't want it. Not good. Regardless of what they look like, what you need to know about the Kallikantzari is that they always come to the surface and they have a very prominent feature, which is big, old dicks.
AMANDA: Oh, okay. In the, like, we have a phallus flopping around like Commedia dell'arte to be funny? Or like they're trying to get some on the surface [6:37]?
JULIA: No. No, the first one. So you can kind of see, just based off of these descriptions, that they do kind of have sort of a tie or callback to the satyrs of old.
AMANDA: Sure.
JULIA: Especially the big dick situation. There's a lot of art of satyrs just dick out, having a great time.
AMANDA: I have to say once more if you think that Court of Thorns and Roses is the first that young women have gotten extremely horny for erotica or specifically monster fucking, you're wrong.
JULIA: We've always been horny for this. It goes back so far.
AMANDA: We've always looked at a horse and said, "What if man torso?"
JULIA: What if?
AMANDA: What if?
JULIA: Now, Amanda, you might also be asking me why they only come up for a short amount of time, right? Like— and also only once a year. What are they doing underground for the rest of the year? Great question. That's also very important as well. But before we get to that, you have to know that modern Greek folklore has a world tree, specifically the tree that holds up the earth.
AMANDA: Oh, cute.
JULIA: Now, this is not super surprising because a ton of religions have a world tree. We've talked about Yggdrasil in Norse mythology. There is a world tree in Hinduism. There are world trees in Native American religions and Chinese mythology as well. So if you're not familiar with the motif, if this happens to be one of your first episodes of Spirits, it's essentially a giant tree that helps support the heavens or the sky. It holds up the terrestrial world, the mortal plane that we currently exist on, and then the roots represent the underworld or the netherworld, right?
AMANDA: So cool. Among one of the best metaphors global mythology has ever brought us.
JULIA: It's a good one and I'm glad that, you know, so many cultures have embraced it as a concept. Ancient Greek mythology had a couple of sacred trees. The oak, in particular, was a tree that was sacred to the god Zeus. And one of these oak trees that was worshiped as sacred for Zeus was located at the ancient city of Paris, where there was an oracle named Dodona, who essentially was a oracle of Zeus who would interpret signs from the gods. And the shrine that was established beneath this oak tree that was used by the oracle Dodona in the city of Epirus was an incredibly important religious site until that tree was cut down by Emperor Theodosius in the fourth century CE.
AMANDA: Dear Theodosius, what to say to you? Why, my man, why?
JULIA: Well, he didn't want, you know, pagans worshipping in Greece.
AMANDA: If it's me, Julia, I'm not cutting down a sacred tree, no matter what you do to me. I'm not cutting down any tree, unless it is like extremely necessary for the health of other trees.
JULIA: Yeah. Well, apparently, this oak was very, very, very old, hundreds, if not thousands of years old. And before that, the Greeks said that that tree had such deep roots that they reached all the way down to Tartarus.
AMANDA: Damn.
JULIA: Which is the underworld in Greek mythology. This is particularly relevant for us, even though I told you this is a modern Greek folklore story, because it is said that the Kallikantzari, as the mischievous goblins that they are, spend the entire year sawing away at the trunk of the world tree, because they want it to collapse along with the world itself.
AMANDA: Oh, boy. They really are mischievous.
JULIA: Just mischievous little guys. They just want to see the world burn, as Alfred says in The Dark Knight.
AMANDA: But you know what, Julia? You gotta admire their dedication. They're there. 300 and, wait for it, 53 days a year.
JULIA: That's true.
AMANDA: Just chop, chop, choppin' away.
JULIA: Chop, chop, choppin' away. Love that for them. So they spend all of this time trying to destroy the world. And just as they're about to cut through the last part of the trunk of the tree, it is Christmas Day.
AMANDA: Thank you, Jesus.
JULIA: And for whatever reason, maybe because it's close to the winter solstice and the veil between worlds is thin. But on Christmas Day, they are able to come to the surface. And for those 12 days of Christmas, they forget about the tree and they just start causing absolute chaos for people.
AMANDA: I mean, me too. It's giving spring break, right? You're on the overworld for the first time in a while. You're gonna go ham.
JULIA: God, reframing it as spring break for the goblins that are trying to cut down the world tree.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Incredible. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Damn.
AMANDA: Right? Like this is Daytona Beach, Julia, come on.
JULIA: Kallikantzari gone wild.
AMANDA: Exactly right.
JULIA: Fuck.
AMANDA: Dicks are out. I mean, we're already—
JULIA: Dicks are out.
AMANDA: —halfway there.
JULIA: Yeah, yeah. No one was showing dicks, though, in those Girls Gone Wild videos and that's really a shame.
AMANDA: I know, it's not fair.
JULIA: That's not fair for the rest of us, you know? So they're out here causing chaos. Sometimes it's as mild as pranks where they'll, you know, spoil the milk or they'll eat people's Christmas feasts, or they'll come down the chimney and pee in the fireplace to put your fire out in the middle of the night.
AMANDA: Ew.
JULIA: Sometimes they can be a bit more malicious than that, though. It is said on the island of Chios, which is the fifth largest island in Greece, by the way, that the Kallikantzari will roam around slicing people with their sharp claws. But also not automatically. If you came across a Kallikantzaros just chilling on the island of Chios, they aren't necessarily going to beat you up, slice you open, et cetera. First, however, they will push you to the ground and sit on you.
AMANDA: Okay. I mean, I— not my favorite situation, but better than having my belly sliced open just on sight.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. And then they will ask you the question, "Toe, which is a type of like hemp fiber or lead?"
AMANDA: Just like generally my preference?
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: I mean, I guess toe.
JULIA: Yes. Well, if you answer toe, Amanda, which thankfully you did, they will spare you and let you go. But if you answer lead, you will be crushed by an enormous weight and the Kallikantzaros will slash and beat you half to death.
AMANDA: Okay, all right. Glad my instinct was right there. I figured if I'm going to be, like, entombed or entrapped by a substance, I'd rather a nice natural fiber than a lead.
JULIA: That is a good point, a good point for sure. There's a lot of— from, you know, our last episode, there was a lot of weaving going on, there was a lot of spinning going on, so it is kind of funny that they're like, "Oh, another fiber one could spin with."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Now, there is a way of getting around all of that, because of course, in any sort of folklore or modern fairy tale, there's always some sort of way of getting around the trickster spirit, right?
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: So it is said that if you want to avoid being attacked by the Kallikantzaros in the first place, you leave them a colander, Amanda.
AMANDA: A colander? Like what we wash grapes with.
JULIA: Yes. Do you want to guess why you would leave them a colander?
AMANDA: Let me say that they think holes are funny as people who walk around with their dicks swinging out. And so giving them an object with so many small holes is just like so hilarious and/or distracting that they get distracted by the colander. Like a peanut butter enrichment mat for a dog and don't tear up your couch.
JULIA: You know, you're not that far off.
AMANDA: Let's go.
JULIA: So basically, if you leave them a colander or leave a colander out, like, in your household, it will distract them because they have to count the holes in the colander.
AMANDA: Okay, okay.
JULIA: But the problem is, Amanda, they always get caught up on the number three.
AMANDA: That's not very far.
JULIA: Because of the Trinity.
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: Because it's a holy number.
AMANDA: The three comes, they go, "Hang on, have to pray a full rosary."
JULIA: It's more like they'll be like, "One, two— ooh, I can't say that one. I got to start over."
AMANDA: And then that just happens forever.
JULIA: Yeah, pretty much. And so basically, they start counting again, they get tripped up on three again, and then the process just keeps happening over and over again. And eventually, he can't go after you and you're allowed to flee, right?
AMANDA: Incredibly heartwarming.
JULIA: And they'll keep doing that until the sun rises the next day, because they only come out at night.
AMANDA: They're hyper-focused little beasts.
JULIA: There is another version of the story which comes out of Zakynthos, where if you leave out a tangled clump of thread instead of a colander, the Kallikantzaros will become so focused on counting or detangling the threads that it would stay until the sun rises, or the cock crows, if you want to be specific about the timing. And if it is caught in the light of dawn, it'll be destroyed.
AMANDA: Oh, boy.
JULIA: I mean, that's kind of like a very classic theme, right? Like, you see the same thing happen to trolls in Lord of the Rings where they get turned into stone if they're hit by sunlight.
AMANDA: Purifying rays of the sun.
JULIA: Well, Amanda, if you don't have a ball of thread or a colander on hand, you can always bribe them with food to keep them away, which is, I guess, sort of the opposite of leaving cookies out for Santa, right?
AMANDA: Yeah, I mean, you're not not bribing Santa with the cookies and milk, you know?
JULIA: Yeah, but you're not bribing Santa to stay away by leaving him out food.
AMANDA: Yeah. I guess you're thanking him for doing what you're expecting he's going to do, which is bring you and your child a lot of expensive presents.
JULIA: Right. And with the Kallikantzaros leaving out a little bit of cookie or a little bit of dessert or something like that is to— hey— be like, "Hey, get the fuck out of here. We gave you something. You don't need to come in here." So honey cakes and other desserts are commonly left out during the 12 days of Christmas. And on the island of Samos, New Year's Eve is also a very important day to leave food out for the Kallikantzari. So in Cyprus, they tend to skew more towards breakfast foods, so like eggs and sausages, which they will leave out on the Epiphany.
AMANDA: Cute.
JULIA: But they also— this is just very funny to me, they also enjoy taking pancakes and then tossing them on the rooftop on the last day of the 12 days of Christmas, which is when the Kallikantzari are getting ready to return underground.
AMANDA: It's really cute, and I'm sure the favorite day of all birds.
JULIA: Yeah. The birds are probably having a blast eating all of those pancakes. Sometimes it's also not pancakes, but rather lokma, which I think here we call them honey balls, you know?
AMANDA: Got it.
JULIA: If you've ever had those, like, fried balls that are then, like, seeped in a honey, like, glaze or sauce.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah.
JULIA: That's what I'm talking about.
AMANDA: So good.
JULIA: And then those are also tossed on the roof to stop the goblins from coming down the chimney. I really like the idea of, like, even if they're not eating them, like they're so sticky that maybe they're getting stuck and they can't go down the chimney.
AMANDA: It was like, "Oh, oh. Ew, ew. I have to go home and wash, ew."
JULIA: Or it's like, "Oh, oh, too many steps. I can't make it." Or like they just can't crawl down the chimney because they're covered in honey now.
AMANDA: You know, I— we really have, like, laid aside as a society, the— they're not just punishments, but like hilarious hijinks of immersing fellow adults in sticky substances. Like I'm not calling for tarring and feathering to come back. That's certainly bad. But—
JULIA: My immediate thought of what you meant.
AMANDA: But I do think that a sort of Home Alone style, Parent Trap style hijinks covering an enemy in a sticky substance hits every time.
JULIA: Yeah. And I mean, we're going to ignore the fact that those two men would be dead if those things happened to them.
AMANDA: Yeah, yeah, they would.
JULIA: They would fully die.
AMANDA: They would fully die.
JULIA: They would never recover even if they didn't die. So speaking of the chimney, I mentioned this earlier in the episode, but that is normally where they would enter the house. And so there are a bunch of customs across Greece as to how to keep them from coming down the chimney, right?
AMANDA: Cool.
JULIA: So one of the classics is, of course, keeping a fire burning throughout the night, which also just happens to coincide with the tradition of the Yule log, right?
AMANDA: Nice.
JULIA: They're very, very similar. But one of my favorite alternatives is that in order to ward off the Kallikantzari, you might toss some old, bad smelling shoes into the fire.
AMANDA: Oh. And then burn them?
JULIA: And apparently, the smell of that smoke will ward off the goblins.
AMANDA: In the spirit of our Old Wives' Tale Teller corduroy hat available at spiritspodcast.com/merch.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: What are the odds that a wife whose husband refused to throw out his shoes, even though they were so effing stinky and done for this world? And then she was like, "Wait, I heard that we can prevent the Kallikantzari from coming down. If, and only if, we burn all the stinky shoes. Doesn't matter whose shoes they are, but only the stinky ones."
JULIA: I also really like the idea maybe they are like, "Well, maybe for Christmas, your ass could get me new shoes and I can burn these ones to keep the goblins away."
AMANDA: "Yeah. The old stinky ones, Jeff, that are six years old, huh?"
JULIA: Hmm? Hmm? And apparently, the Kallikantzari are very sensitive to smells because the burning of incense is also something that is supposed to ward them off, which is sort of a classic Catholic, Greek, Orthodox kind of thing, right?
AMANDA: And the lovely thing to do in the winter time, make your house smell nice and delicious.
JULIA: We love to smell some incense out here, a little frankincense, a little myrrh, you know, the usual.
AMANDA: Ooh. Are the Wise Men coming on the Annunciation? Oh, maybe.
JULIA: Maybe.
AMANDA: Maybe.
JULIA: Maybe. That's what the epiphany is, sometimes, depending on who you ask. There is another level to the lore, of course, which is also out of Zakynthos which stands out, I think, a little bit different from the others, but I also think is really fascinating and I really wanted to mention. But it is said that if a child was born on Christmas Eve, it was considered, in some ways, cursed.
AMANDA: Oh, no.
JULIA: Do you want to guess why a child born on Christmas Eve is cursed, Amanda?
AMANDA: Oh, is it because Kallikantzari could get into the womb?
JULIA: No. Oh, God. Thank God that's not it. No.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: No, it was because it was believed that it was sinful for a woman to dare conceive a child on the same day as the Virgin Mary.
AMANDA: Oh, okay. The Virgin— 101, Julia, the Virgin Mary didn't conceive jack shit, okay? The Holy Ghost, the Trinity of which the Kallikantzari are so scared, dooted her on the nose, they booped her on the nose, and there is the son of God. That is the lore, okay? That is the lore. She didn't conceive nothing.
JULIA: Can I tell you a very specific thing that I remember learning from my religious studies classes and particularly a class called Understanding the Bible?
AMANDA: I would love to, Julia, because as an adult convert to Judaism, the Catholicism is just leaking out every year.
JULIA: Canonically, and I love saying canonically about the Bible, it makes me so happy, Mary was impregnated through the ear.
AMANDA: Cool.
JULIA: Yeah?
AMANDA: The holiest of holes. I'm always saying this.
JULIA: Are you? Are you always saying this?
AMANDA: Yeah. Julia, you're my best friend. We've known each other since we were five. You don't know that I'm always saying, "The ear, the holiest of holes"?
JULIA: Hmm, you know what? It must have slipped my mind.
AMANDA: Well, don't forget it.
JULIA: So, this child conceived on the same day as the Virgin Mary, cursed.
AMANDA: Incredibly funny.
JULIA: Not how pregnancy or babies necessarily work. Just because a baby was born on a certain day does not mean they were conceived on the same day. Whatever, it's fine. But it is said that the child would be cursed and that when they grew up, they would potentially transform into a Kallikantzaros during the Christmas season. However, there were ways of preventing this. For example, you could bind the baby in a braid of garlic bouquets and straw.
AMANDA: Oh, wow.
JULIA: This would stop the transformation because the holiday season is tough enough already without worrying that your child is gonna transform into a goblin.
AMANDA: No kidding. I bet those bouquets look beautiful, though.
JULIA: I bet they're really pretty. For sure, for sure.
AMANDA: I love a, like, fall crop in a bouquet. Beautiful.
JULIA: God, I wonder how many statistically December babies there are in Greece with this thought process in mind?
AMANDA: Right. Is it statistically lower than average?
JULIA: ? It's a good question, right?
AMANDA: How about our friend, friend of the show, Mischa, who was born on Boxing Day?
JULIA: There you go. Almost—
AMANDA: That's a demure—
JULIA: Potentially could have been conceived on the same day as the Virgin Mary, I don't know.
AMANDA: So your parents waited to demure sort of two days post-Mary conception to make sure.
JULIA: Right. And as we all know, that's how babies work. They are exactly on time all of the time.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Definitely.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: All right, Amanda, I've got some other facts about the Kallikantzari as well as a fun fairy tale version that they're featured in. But first, we got to go and grab our refill.
AMANDA: Let's do it.
[theme]
JULIA: Hey, this is Julia, and welcome to the refill. Thank you so much to our newest patron, Anna Mary. [23:20] You join the ranks of our supporting producer-level patrons Uhleeseeuh, Hannah, Scott, Anne, Matthew, Lily, and Wil. And of course our legend-level patrons, Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Audra, Sarah, Bea Me Up Scotty, Morgan, Bex, Rikoelike, Chibi Yokai, and Michael. And you too can join at patreon.com/spiritspodcast to get cool rewards like ad-free episodes, recipe cards for every single episode, bonus urban legends episodes each month and so much more. Check it out by going to patreon.com/spiritspodcast today. And hey, we need your urban legends for future urban legends episodes. If you went home for the holidays, if you got to talk to some family members and ask them about the ghost stories that they heard growing up, send those in to us. Go to spiritspodcast.com/contact, or you can email us directly at spiritspodcast@gmail.com. If you are a fan of Spirits, I think you would also like Tiny Matters. Tiny Matters is all about how science shapes every part of our lives, but so much of its influence is overlooked or buried in the past. Tiny Matters is an award-winning podcast about tiny things, from molecules to microbes, that have a big and often surprising impact on society. From deadly diseases to forensic toxicology to the search for extraterrestrial life, hosts and former scientists Sam Jones and Deboki Chakravarti embrace the awe and messiness of science and its place in history and today, and how it could impact our world's future. Tiny Matters is brought to you by the American Chemical Society, a nonprofit scientific organization based in Washington, D.C., and a part of Multitude. New episodes every Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is sponsored by bookshop.org. And hey, if you are thinking of getting gifts this holiday season, if you are thinking of buying books for your loved ones, I'm going to tell you right now, you should be going to bookshop.org and using the code SPIRITS at checkout. Because bookshop.org helps to celebrate and support independent bookstores. And independent bookstores are the heart of lot of communities. And unfortunately, because of big box stores or companies like Amazon, they are getting pushed out. They are getting run out of business. And when a independent bookstore closes, a part of me dies a little bit. And you don't want parts of me dying, do you? So I say you should support your local bookstore. And if you don't have a local bookstore, you can support other local bookstores by using bookshop.org. Essentially, how it works is every time you make a purchase from bookshop.org, you're making a purchase either to directly a independent bookstore or you are giving money towards bookshop.org, which then helps use that money to support a whole plethora of independent booksellers across the United States. So check it out, it's bookshop.org. You can use the code SPIRITS and you can get 10 % off your purchase when you do so. That is bookshop.org, where you can get 10% off when you use the code SPIRITS.
AMANDA: This episode is sponsored Saily, a new eSIM service app by the creators of NordVPN, the VPN that I use every day. Saily lets you from several affordable eSIM data plans in over 200 destinations. That means with a Saily eSIM, you will always have a connection when needed. Something that I find really confusing is talking with my cellphone provider about international data, figuring out like what to do if there's fees, when to turn on, remembering it to turn off. It's a huge pain. And so I am so excited that for the next international trip I take, I'm going to be taking along Saily. So the way it works is you download the app. They have a Saily eSIM plan on IOS and Android devices. You buy a plan in the app and then just install the eSIM right there on your phone. Then whenever you get where you're going, upon landing, turning your phone back on, you'll be easily connect to the local network, if before your trip, you took all of the steps about activating it. I'm so, so ready to do this, and know that wherever I go, maybe I'll do some country hopping in Europe this spring, I will have Saily with me. Download the Saily app in your app store. Use code SPIRITS at checkout to get 15% off your first purchase. That's the Saily app in your phone's app store, code SPIRITS at checkout will get you 15% off your first purchase.
miss out on this limited time offer. Uncommon Goods, we're all out of the ordinary.
GUSTAVO: Hi, I'm Gustavo Sorola. And if you love D&D style adventure full of humor and heart, you should check out Tales From The Stinky Dragon. Tales From The Stinky Dragon is a cinematic listening experience complete with guest performances from professional voice actors and comedians, immersive sound design, and its own musical score. Go on a thrilling journey with four friends and me, Gus, their very patient Dungeon Master, as we stumble through disastrous dice rolls, questionable roleplay decisions, and even a few wholesome feel good moments along the way. You can binge on our first two campaigns or join us every other week for our latest third campaign. No matter where you decide to start listening, you're guaranteed to have a side-splitting journeys that's fun for all ages and perfect for both D&D veterans and newcomers alike. Just search for Tales From The Stinky Dragon wherever you listen to podcasts and subscribe today.
JULIA: And now, let's get back to the show.
[theme]
JULIA: We are back. And Amanda, I gotta ask you, have you ever had Ouzo before?
AMANDA: I have not, but I really want to.
JULIA: So it is probably the most popular liquor in Greece and it has a pretty strong anise or fennel flavor. Normally, it is enjoyed straight as sort of, like, a sip in liqueur, like an aperitif or a digestif. So it is not in a lot of classic cocktails, but I did find one cocktail that was called the Greek Tragedy, and I just love that name.
AMANDA: Let's go. Very good.
JULIA: It is a nearly equal parts cocktail plus a bit of lime juice, so it is Ouzo, sweet vermouth, and a raspberry liqueur like Chambord.
AMANDA: It really rounds out the anise-y taste of that liqueur, which I am not always into as, like, the primary note, but as part of a balanced cocktail, I can really get behind. So this is a great recipe.
JULIA: Yes. And, like, sweet but not too sweet, which I think is kind of important. And if you're not careful, it will knock you off your feet like a Kallikantzaros.
AMANDA: Ay.
JULIA: Ay, oh. Look at the jokes we're making here today. Merry Christmas.
AMANDA: If anyone's ever arrested for public intoxication and owns a dick, I think that would be a great excuse to be like, "Officer, I'm just getting in the holiday spirit. Just getting in the holiday spirit." But you do have to do it during the 12 days of Christmas, so all right, this is a little bit more complicated.
JULIA: Well, know, New Year's falls into that category, so you could.
AMANDA: That's true.
JULIA: Include it, then.
AMANDA: That covers a good amount of public indecency, I'm sure.
JULIA: You also probably have to go to Greece because chances are the cop arresting you does not know what you're talking about. And then you play this episode for them.
AMANDA: Then you say, "Do you have 45 to 50 minutes?"
JULIA: All right. Now, what is also interesting, to me at least, is that there are different versions of the Kallikantzari that can be found in the countries that border Greece to the north, so that is Serbia, Bulgaria and Albania. In Serbia in particular, the 12 days of Christmas are considered a dark time of year where the forces of evil gain power and then leave the general population vulnerable to demonic influence.
AMANDA: Oh, no.
JULIA: Including that of the Kallikantzari.
AMANDA: Damn.
JULIA: Their beliefs are also, I think, an interesting combination of the Greek Kallikantzari and another spirit that we've talked about on the show before, which is the Mare, the Mara, or the Nightmare.
AMANDA: Hmm. Whose image will never leave my brain and is a true nightmare.
JULIA: It's very cool. It's very cool. I always think of that picture I showed you of the gremlin crouched on the woman's chest with the incredibly creepy horse in the background.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Never forget.
AMANDA: It's never leaving, Julia. It's right in there. It's right in there.
JULIA: Never forget. So basically in Serbia, the Kallikantzari will sit on the chests of people as they sleep, plaguing them with nightmares as they feed off of their, like, life force, essentially.
AMANDA: What it with these little demons and sitting on chests?
JULIA: It's supposed to be like essentially sleep paralysis, right? Like this idea that there is a— something halting your movement while you sleep.
AMANDA: And I guess you are sort of smothering the, like, life force of a person, but—
JULIA: Exactly.
AMANDA: —it's just like odd, odd idea.
JULIA: There's a great novella by T. Kingfisher that is all about like Mare, Mara, et cetera, that describes the phenomenon really well. And I highly recommend it.
AMANDA: Hell yeah.
JULIA: It is called What Feasts at Night. And I mean, come on.
AMANDA: Hmm!
JULIA: That's so good. So they will sit on people's chests while they're sleeping. And then when the sun rises, that's when they will disappear again. They are also said to enter through the chimney and other than, quote unquote, "riding" the sleeping residents, they will find disobedient children and then they will devour them.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Classic.
AMANDA: Classic.
JULIA: A particularly interesting difference from the Greek version as well is that they tend to be portrayed as women.
AMANDA: Really? That is unusual.
JULIA: Yeah. So picture this, incredibly creepy, get ready for it. You're a child around Christmas time, you wake up in the middle of the night, and you go into your living room, and then from out of your chimney, a woman's long outstretched arms reach from the soot-covered flue to try and grab you.
AMANDA: No, thank you.
JULIA: Well, that's how it's described in Serbia. Horrifying. Merry Christmas.
AMANDA: Serbia goes hard, man.
JULIA: The Bulgarian version of this goblin has several different forms. So there is a hairy demonic form with a tail and large horns, kind of similar to the standard Greek version that I described earlier. But there is also a one-eyed, one-legged version as well as one that is simply a man with a horse's head.
AMANDA: Bad.
JULIA: Yeah. That one's honestly the spookiest in my mind.
AMANDA: At least BoJack Horseman is horse all the way through. If he was man, just horse head, that would be—
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: —so bad.
JULIA: No, it's bad. Yeah. It's really bad. It's not a good time. So they, much like the other versions, only come out at night and attack their victims. They will also, like the Serbian version, ride their victims, though not necessarily in their beds. So if they come across someone outside of their home in the middle of the night during these 12 days of Christmas, they will jump on their backs and force them to run through fields or through the forest where when the sun rises, they are lost.
AMANDA: Damn.
JULIA: There are even stories of them throwing their victims off of cliffs or into rivers where they will then drown.
AMANDA: Oh, my God, this is like killing killing.
JULIA: Yeah. They also have a fascinating origin according to local legend. It is said that when you slaughter a pig for Christmas, a thing that a lot of us in our homes are doing constantly, the goblin will grow out of the head of the pig—
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: —and drink all of the blood from the roast.
AMANDA: Wow. I mean, I'm not typically using the blood for anything, so I guess fair enough, but I'd rather skip the sort of, like, regrowing a head from, sorry, [34:44] nerving, a stump.
JULIA: Yeah, yeah. However, if you want to avoid this, Amanda, you have to leave the head of the pig next to the chimney, which will stop the goblin from emerging and harassing your household.
AMANDA: I mean, I'll also probably smoke the head of the pig, which would have some delicious sort of—
JULIA: Kind of yummy.
AMANDA: What do you call them? The brain cheese?
JULIA: Head cheese.
AMANDA: Head cheese.
JULIA: Now, all of these versions of the tale hold a lot of weight among the Christmas time traditions in this region. But part of the reason that it has persisted for as long as it has is because of the retelling of the Greek fairy tale titled Kallo and the Goblins. Now, there are a couple of different variations of this story, but the one that I'm going to tell you comes from Folktales from Greece: A Treasury of Delights.
AMANDA: Indeed.
JULIA: Yeah. This is a wonderful collection of a bunch of different Greek folk and fairy tales. If you can find it, pick it up. I think it's honestly, like, very enjoyable. I bought myself a copy because my library did not have it and I was having a lot of fun reading it.
AMANDA: Aw.
JULIA: So the story goes that in Greece, there was a mother who had two daughters, Marbo and Kallo. And to the audience, to the listeners, if you listen to our Jack Frost episode, and now we're listening to this episode, this is gonna sound wildly familiar. I don't know why we keep having these stories, but it just keeps happening. So Marbo and Kallo. Kallo was the younger daughter and very beautiful, while her older sister Marbo was considered by the village ugly.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: I'm not going to call her ugly, but it says in the story that they considered her ugly.
AMANDA: Very well put, because beauty truly eye of a beholder.
JULIA: Exactly. Growing up as more and more people admired and complimented Kallo's beauty and kindness, Marbo became more and more jealous.
AMANDA: Sure.
JULIA: This manifested in Marbo not wanting to ever leave the house. Sounds like depression, girlfriend. I'm going to be completely honest with you here.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: If her mother asked if she could run an errand or simply get into town, Marbo would refuse and tell her to send Kallo. And Kallo, always eager to please, would agree to do off the chores.
AMANDA: Man, when she's hot and nice, that's tough, because there's nothing you can hate.
JULIA: It's tough out there. It's tough out there.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: One Christmas Eve, the mother was preparing the traditional sweets, but found that she had run out of flour. So she asks Marbo to go to the mill and grind more wheat to make the flour. But Marbo, as you would expect, says, "No. Send Kallo instead." Kallo agrees and so loaded the family donkey with two sacks of wheat and made her way to the mill. But when she got to the mill, she was surprised to see that there was a line of people waiting to grind their wheat into flour. It's Christmas Eve. Everyone's baking. This makes sense to me. The line was so long that by the time it was Kallo's turn, the sun had already set and it was dark out. It was so late that the miller loaded up her wheat into the millstone and then went to bed, leaving Kallo in the dark with nothing but a small oil lamp while she waited for her wheat to grind.
AMANDA: Aw.
JULIA: Kinda sad, but like, you know, she's just chillin'. It's fine. It's all good.
AMANDA: You know, sometimes you go on an errand and you're like, "Oh, this is going to be my whole day." And there's kind of peace to that. You're like—
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: —"All right. This is this is what I'm doing today. Today, it's me and the DMV. And we're just going to be here all day."
JULIA: It's kind of nice. It's kind of nice. I'll give you that. So it was close to midnight when she heard footsteps. Kallo turned to see what the noise was, thinking that maybe the miller had returned or something like that. But instead, she saw a gang of hideous goblins sneaking their way into the mill.
AMANDA: Dicks out.
JULIA: Dicks out. They don't specify that in this fairy tale for children, but you have to assume the dicks are out.
AMANDA: Not what you want to see in a Czech's watch, mill with a gigantic millstone.
JULIA: In this moment, Kallo remembers that it is the start of the 12 days of Christmas and that this is the time of year that the goblins would come up to the earth to do their mischief. Terrified, Kallo could do nothing but stand there frozen as the goblins reached out to run their sharp nails along her skin. I'm gonna do a goblin voice, I'm warning you right now.
AMANDA: Let's go. Locking in.
JULIA: "We're going to eat you up, Kallo. We'll eat you up," they taunted her.
AMANDA: Great voice.
JULIA: And Kallo, despite her fear and panic, quickly told them, "Oh, I know you're going to eat me, of course, but you can't eat me like this." Now this surprised and confused the goblins who are like, "How can we eat you? What's going on? What do you mean?"
AMANDA: Right. What's wrong?
JULIA: And she's like, "Well, you can't eat me in this old dress. I'm going to need a new dress before you can eat me," she tells them.
AMANDA: Sure.
JULIA: And the goblins are like, "Hmm, okay. Well, we'll bring you a new dress so that we can then eat you." And so they all, like, gather around, they're like, "New dress, new dress," and then they scatter, and they go off in all different directions.
AMANDA: Now, I've transitioned to thinking about minions, so there is still—
JULIA: Oh, no.
AMANDA: —a kind of like spherical, brightly colored animated character with one to two eyes situation.
JULIA: Now imagine minions, but with horrifyingly sharp claws.
AMANDA: Don't want to.
JULIA: Well, you put that in my brain.
AMANDA: Yep. I'm sorry.
JULIA: That's on you.
AMANDA: I'm sorry. We didn't talk about the huge dicks, but also they're there. Are they also yellow? I don't know. It's not my place.
JULIA: That's why they keep saying banana.
AMANDA: No.
JULIA: This is not a child-friendly episode. Just putting that out there. Not a child-friendly episode.
AMANDA: I think the gigantic dicks mentioned in minute five is doing that for us.
JULIA: You're the one mentioning Mike Wazowski and minions.
AMANDA: I—
JULIA: That's not on me.
AMANDA: Yeah. I am.
JULIA: Okay, so these goblins, they scatter, they go off in all different directions to try to find Kallo a dress. They go into various homes, they go into various shops until they sneak into a clothing store, and they steal the prettiest dress in the shop and they bring it back to Kallo at the mill. And they go like, "Oh, well, now you have your pretty dress. We can eat you." But she replies again, "You can't eat me like this. You can't eat me while I'm barefooted on Christmas. I need shoes."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And they're like, "Oh, shoes, shoes, shoes." So the goblins consider this and then they go off again and they search the whole town until they find the prettiest shoes that they can find. And then once again, they bring them back to Kallo and she puts them on. "Okay, now we get to eat you." "No," Kallo tells them, "I need a coat." And then the goblins again are like, "Okay, makes sense, let's go find you a coat." And again, they searched the town, they find the nicest coat that they can find. But then Kallo's like, "Oh, no, actually, I don't just need a coat, I need a fur coat."
AMANDA: Sure. Gotta go out in style.
JULIA: Yeah, again, "Makes sense." The goblins go out again. When they return with the fur coat, she's like, "Oh, you know what else I need? Umbrella."
AMANDA: Just in case it rains.
JULIA: "Oh, actually, I need a comb, maybe some face powder as well." Anything that she could think of, she asked the goblins and they went out to find her.
AMANDA: Has the sun risen yet?
JULIA: Hmm, hmm, hmm, Amanda. Now, this goes on and on through the whole night until the sun begins to rise and the cock crowed in the new day.
AMANDA: Smart.
JULIA: But when the cock crowed, the goblins went scrambling to find shelter because they could not stay out during the day.
AMANDA: Not just a pretty face. She's also smart.
JULIA: Not just a pretty face. There we go. It's all those chores. She's so industrious. And with that, the miller woke up and helped Kallo load up her flower onto the donkey while Kallo tied up, you know, all of the things that these goblins had given her onto her saddle. And they made her way back to her home in the village. I also want to pause here and say, I love that the miller's not like, "Hey, where did this, like, fur coat come from that you now have?" He's just like, "Here's your wheat. Get going, kid. Merry Christmas."
AMANDA: He's like a bartender who did the closing and the opening shifts back to back. And when they did a clopening, they're just like, "I don't care what's happening here. It doesn't matter. I'm at work."
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: "That's enough."
JULIA: Now at this point, Kallo had been gone all night and her mother was very worried. But when she saw her approaching the house with all of these gifts from the goblins, she was really surprised. And when she and Marbo asked where all of these gifts came from, Kallo told her all about how she had confronted the goblins and asks them for all of these things. And so Marbo gets it into her head that maybe she could do the same thing.
AMANDA: Uh-oh.
JULIA: Seems easy enough, right? You just ask goblins for stuff.
AMANDA: Uh-oh.
JULIA: But because Kallo had just brought back two bags of flour, there's no excuse for her to go to the mill, right? So she knew that she would have to be able to go back to the mill before the Epiphany, because the goblins could only stay until the Epiphany, which is when the priests would go out with holy water and banish the goblins and other evil spirits back beneath the earth. And so Marbo would go into the pantry every day and spill a little bit of flour here, a little bit of flour there, so that by the time New Year's Eve arrived, all of the flour was gone.
AMANDA: Damn.
JULIA: When their mother went to bake for New Year's Eve and saw that there was no flour left, she asked her daughters, "Which one of you will go to the mill and grind some wheat?" And this time Marbo's like, "Me, me. I'll do it this time. Me, Marbo, I'm showing initiative."
AMANDA: Suspicious.
JULIA: Well, you say suspicious, but their mother, super surprised, is happy to see her daughter showing some initiative.
AMANDA: See, I know that mom didn't have sisters because if she did, she'd be like, "Hmm, something hinky's going on."
JULIA: Well, she allows her to load up the donkey and they head off. But Marbo took her time going to the mill to make sure that she would have to spend the night there. So she's, like, arriving essentially at, like, 10:00 p.m. to this mill, knocking on the miller's door, being like, "I need wheat right now. It doesn't matter that it's 10:00 p.m."
AMANDA: Again, walking into a restaurant at closing being like, "A three-course meal, please." Ugh.
JULIA: You're like, 'No. Actually, the kitchen's closed."
AMANDA: "Get away."
JULIA: So it was already dark when she arrived at the mill and the miller did the same thing that he had done before. So he loaded up the wheat and then he went off to bed. So Marbo waited, anticipating the arrival of the goblins. And just like they had for Kallo, the goblins arrived just around midnight. And much like they did with Kallo, they surrounded Marbo and told her, "Oh, we're going to eat you." But Marbo, unlike Kallo, could not keep a cool head in the presence of these foul creatures, and so she cries out, "Help! The goblins, they're gonna eat me!"
AMANDA: Not how you do it.
JULIA: Luckily, she's doing this at the mill, right? And the miller, just upstairs in his bedroom, so he hears her screaming from his bedroom and so he runs down to come to her aid. But by the time that he arrives and scares away the goblins, they have already reached Marbo and scratched up her face.
AMANDA: No.
JULIA: So Marbo returns home distressed and depressed, fearing that she would be even uglier in the eyes of the villagers now.
AMANDA: They already deemed her ugly.
JULIA: I know. Isn't that fucked?
AMANDA: That is.
JULIA: But Kallo, beautiful, sweet soul Kallo, seeing how sad her sister was, offered her half of the gifts that the goblins had given her.
AMANDA: Nice.
JULIA: And when she gave Marbo the face powder, which was one of the last things she requested from the goblins, the girl applied it to her wounds on her face and they magically healed.
AMANDA: Aw.
JULIA: Marbo no longer held a grudge against her sister and the three women lived well for the rest of their days.
AMANDA: Incredible ending. I thought for sure Marbo was gonna die, so I am very glad to hear that everyone was okay.
JULIA: Hey, listen, it's a safe assumption from the amount of stories I've told you in the past several episodes, where it's like, "Yeah, sister tries to go and do the thing that the nice sister did and gets absolutely fucked."
AMANDA: Killed in the well, sorry.
JULIA: Yeah. Killed in the well, frozen to death by tree. It's not a good time for sisters who are being lazy. This one, at least, has a happy ending.
AMANDA: Love it.
JULIA: Well, Amanda, that's all I have for the Kallikantzaros and I hope that you enjoyed this new to me Christmas tale. I really love these stories. I really like a mischievous tale that makes Christmas a little more magical, but in sort of, like, a classic way is how I would describe it.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And I think that we need more tales like Krampus, like some of the stories that we told last week with the embodiments of winter, like the Yule Lads who we've talked about in the past, right? So I want more ghost stories for us to tell around the darkest nights of the year, because I think it balances out that sort of saccharine sweetness that comes with mainstream Western Christmas traditions, right?
AMANDA: We have our fire, Julia. We have our Yule log. We have our hearth, but the flame is only so big to keep that encroaching darkness at bay. And here on Spirits, we love to peer into the shadows and see what might be lurking there.
JULIA: So the next time you are walking down the street during the 12 days of Christmas and see something spooky approaching, remember, stay creepy.
AMANDA: Stay cool.
JULIA: Later, Satyrs.
[theme]