From our archives: A 1988 look at how a Greek family in South Jersey lived the Christmas season, from church and cookies to dancing late into the night.
In late December 1988, at a time when Greek-American communities across the Delaware Valley were shaped by multiple generations of immigration, The Philadelphia Inquirer published a rare, close look at how one Greek Orthodox household celebrated the Christmas season.
The feature, written by Dorothy G. Wegard and centered on the Kokolis family of Voorhees, New Jersey, documented how the family observed the traditional Greek Christmas season inside an American suburban home.
At its center was the kitchen. Ten-year-old Alex Kokolis waited as his mother, Amalia, prepared melomakarona, the honey-soaked Christmas cookies that remain a staple of Greek Christmas to this day. The original report used the older Anglicized spelling “melomakaronas.”
The Inquirer’s reporting followed the family well beyond December 25. Like many Greek Orthodox households, the Kokolises observed a season rather than a single holiday. After Christmas came St. Basil’s Day on January 1 with the cutting of the vasilopita and the hidden coin. Then, on January 6, Theophania closed the cycle with the blessing of the waters.
The coverage also traced the social geography of Greek-American Christmas in South Jersey at the time. Christmas Day unfolded not in one home, but across many. After church and opening gifts, the family moved from house to house between Cherry Hill and Voorhees, visiting siblings, gathering for meals, exchanging presents, and reinforcing the extended-family networks that defined diaspora life.
The Inquirer listed a table that mixed American and Greek tradition without contradiction: turkey beside whole roast pig, christopsomo, baklava, kourabiedes, pasta flora, retsina, and wine from Cephalonia, the island Nicholas and Amalia Kokolis had left behind when they immigrated to the United States in 1967.
The feature also recorded the multi-stop holiday visits and the church pageants performed by the children.
It closed not with theology or food, but with movement. After Christmas dinner, the furniture was pushed aside and the family joined hands for traditional dances like Kalamatianos and Ballos.
“We dance until we drop,” the Kokolis’ son Spiro told the paper.
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