Christmas is an important cultural and religious event in Cyprus, second only to Easter and the Lenten season. Food plays a major role in the holiday season, as gifts, feasts, and symbols. Baked goods are especially important and every region added its own special twist to the traditional recipes.

A Cyprus Christmas involves almond shortbread “kourabiedes“, honey spice cookies “melomakarona“, and apricot-jam & brandy cookies “pasta flora“ and “Gennopitta” or“christopsomo”. 

Kourabiedes

Kourabiedes are almond cookies with powdered sugar that are made and eaten  around Christmas and New Year. People start baking them in the weeks before Christmas. 

Melomakarona

The melomakarona  is an egg-shaped dessert made mainly from flour, olive oil, and honey. Along with the kourabies, it is a traditional dessert prepared primarily during the Christmas holiday season. They are also known as finikia.

Pasta Frola 

Παστα Φλωρα

(Pasta Flora Cyprot Apricot Jam Coffee Cake) 

A coffee cake, with a layer of apricot jam and a lattice crust.

Bread is the most important of the Cypriot holiday foods. Historically, flour and yeast were scarce and expensive and thus saved for special meals. Traditional items, such as Christmas bread or stravropsomo, a fruit-filled loaf, decorated on top with the sign of the cross and Gennopitta or Chistopsomo or “Christ’s Bread”, a leavened bread made of flour, sesame seeds, and spices, such as anise, orange, cloves, and cinnamon accompanied by dried figs, are eaten on Christmas Eve.

 

Gennopitta 

This bread is sweet. Its distinctive characteristics is that it is decorated with a cross. It is usually round with a cross made of dough and is covered with sesame seeds.

The bread is not cut by a knife but by hands, as the bread symbolizes that goodness should not be hurt in any way by the knife which symbolises evil

Vassilopita

is the famous New Year’s Cake. It is made in honor of a beautiful act of charity by St. Basil to the poor and needy of his flock. In order to insure that the needy would have money for life’s necessities. St. Basil had the ladies of his church bake sweet bread with coins baked into them. In this way he could give them money.

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