Christmas Turkey
Santa Claus didn't come from Lapland but from the Lycian coast, a long way from the nearest reindeer. Jeremy Seal goes in search of a much misunderstood saint. Guardian, 3/12/2005
The crowds outside the ancient basilica at Demre descended on the hawkers’ stalls. On the one hand; pilgrims from Orthodox Greece and Russia snapping up devotional key rings, beaded pennants and miniature plastic icons of their revered St Nicholas, bishop here in the fourth century. On the other; western tourists from Britain, Scandinavia and Germany buying the meerschaum-carved figurines, fridge magnets, red-painted bulbous pumpkin gourds and bearded rugs representing the rather different figure the same saint had evolved into over 1500 years of Christian history. It was from this very spot, now a nondescript Turkish town largely swathed in polythene hothouses, that St Nicholas began his epic posthumous journey westwards to Santa Claus. Know him as Santa or Father Christmas, our familiar seasonal icon causes a mini-exodus in the weeks leading up to December 25th. Families pack out charter flights to visit the jolly old man in resorts across Finnish and Swedish Lapland. Shoppers head for New York, where the secular Santa was spawned in the nineteenth century, or for the Continent’s Christmas markets at Prague and Salzburg to exercise credit cards in his name. But for the true story behind Santa’s origins, wait for the summer months and head for ancient Lycia in Turkey’s southwest, home some 1700 years ago to St Nicholas, whose name would subsequently be rendered as Santa Claus in American-accented Dutch. Nicholas’ original patch, chance would have it, has become Turkey’s most visited corner, and deservingly so. The poly tunnels soon give way to herb-scented mountains and swathes of pine and juniper forest above a coast which is alluringly indented with ruin-strewn coves and inlets. Leaven the history of St Nicholas – calling it the Santa trail would suggest a commercialism that’s blissfully absent – with everything from excellent coastal trekking on the waymarked Lycian Way, river and sea kayaking, paragliding and canyoning, to lazing on the Mediterranean’s longest beach, at Patara, which just happens to be Nicholas’ birthplace. I picked up a hire car and headed for the Kaya valley near Fethiye. The valley is renowned for the hillside ruins of Levissi which its Greek inhabitants were expelled from in the political upheavals of the 1920s, along with the rest of Anatolia’s Christian population. Kaya’s story was recently dusted down by Louis de Bernieres in his epic novel Birds Without Wings. With its gutted neo-classical homes stripped to grey stone and concrete shells by the elements, its echoing handsome basilicas and its cisterns dressed in mosaics of pebble, Levissi provided me with a haunting reminder of Turkey’s Christian heritage. But St Nicholas spurred me to older ruins. I drove a few kilometers down the rutted forest track to the cove at Gemiler. Mehmet, who was working at one of the simple fish restaurants above the beach, agreed to ferry me across the narrow strait to the uninhabited island one hundred metres offshore. It was one of those barely excavated sites that Turkey excels in; the rustle of snakes and tortoises, and the cobwebbed holly oaks and olive trees which had forced skewed gaps between the stone blocks, drenching the place in an atmosphere of overgrown abandonment. And it had been known, since the time of the Crusades, as St Nicholas Island. A rising path led past the ruins of fifth century basilicas, cemeteries and water cisterns to the island’s summit where the grand remains of a once-roofed processional way descended by a long series of steps to the island’s far end. Mehmet offered the imaginative local explanation; that the island was once home to a fair-skinned queen who had commissioned the covered way to protect her from the Mediterranean sun. The concentration of basilicas suggests, however, that the island was actually a significant stop-off, complete with summit shrine, on the ancient pilgrimage route to the Holy Land. Mehmet directed me to a surviving scrap of fresco among the ruins which depicted St Nicholas. Here was evidence that the saint of the sea – Nicholas would succeed Poseidon as protector of sailors – had been quick to establish his renown along the great maritime arteries which would carry his name to the West.
Kaya’s ruin-littered olive groves, gardens and smallholdings enchanted me. The footpaths which threaded this hideaway valley often led to old monasteries or to ancient sarcophagae whose arched backs rose from the landscape like petrified barns. In the shadow of Levissi’s ruins, the valley’s atmospheric focus, stood a few outdoor family restaurants. I stopped at the Poseidon for an excellent gozleme or savoury pancake baked on an open hearth. Owls called as I walked the lanes back to my lodgings, a simply restored self-catering cottage called Beatrix whose garden was home to a donkey and more tortoises. It also had delightfully on-hand owners, John and Bea, who knew everybody and ran what must surely be Turkey’s only village croquet club.
Patara substantiated what Kaya had suggested; that the canny Nicholas had come to be associated with the pick of places along this coast. The ancient city of his birth lies a few yards above fifteen kilometers of pristine white sand beach. It so happens that Patara is also the birthplace of endangered loggerhead turtles who return in subsequent summers to lay their own eggs on the beach; bathers are continually warned against disturbing them. The turtles, in tandem with the teeming bird life in the marsh which was Patara’s long-silted harbour, have combined to prevent the developers landing a punch here when they have all but floored other beaches such as Oludeniz.
Nothing tangible remains of St Nicholas’ association with Patara; even so, the dune-swathed amphitheatre, the Roman gateway and the sunken streets make these among the most evocative of all Anatolia’s ruins. At the end of a hot afternoon clambering among fallen columns and capitols, I crossed the dunes to the beach for a cooling swim and a glass of sweet tea at the beach café. Then it was back to my lodgings at the Patara View Point Hotel, with its panoramic setting and swimming pool, and run with typically idiosyncratic Turkish charm by its owner, Muzaffer Otlu.
And so to Demre, Myra to the Byzantines, the hub of Nicholas’ cult. The statue of Santa Claus in the main square and the stalls of the hawkers could not disguise a stubbornly agricultural town largely unimpressed by Turkey’s tourism boom. A delicious irony, this, that while many theme parks, ski resorts and department store grottoes worldwide seasonally tout themselves as the real home of Santa, all that the real real one does is go about its business, seasonally disappearing beneath harvests of hot-housed tomatoes. Refreshing but hardly charming; unlike Kaya or Patara, you wouldn’t want to overnight here, and the absence of hotels ensures you won’t. You’ll find a range of accommodation at the likeable fishing port of Kas half an hour to the west, or the delightful waterside pansiyons at the low-key Kekova villages of Ucagiz and Kale.
St Nicholas’ basilica at Demre has been only partially excavated from the earthquakes and floods, abandonments and pirate raids of the centuries. It has no particular architectural merit, but this building-site complex of arcades and courtyards cocooning the nave remains a movingly impressive monument largely by virtue of its very survival. This patched-up wreck of a church conveys a tenacity to match that of its patron, Nicholas, who has proved the most adaptable of saints in his progress down the centuries.
Be sure to enquire about public access – uncertain at the time of going to press - to the basilica’s early frescoes. Recently restored, these are a rich representation of stories and episodes from the life of St Nicholas. A fascinating historical artifact, they constitute a twelfth-century hoarding board, helping to create a devotional ripple effect which spread the saint’s renown across Christendom.
I finished my Nicholas tour at Antalya, fast emerging from provincial obscurity as Turkey’s holiday playground. This boom city, with smart beach clubs, a much-vaunted minimalist resort hotel called Hillside Su and an attractive old city quarter, Kaleici, also has a magnificent archaeological museum. I admired the 2nd century statuary, ten-foot high marble gods and emperors from the nearby archaeological site at Perge, but had my mind on a smaller artifact. I eventually tracked it down; a tiny reliquary box containing some human bones said to belong to a certain saint. Nicholas might have made the greatest of posthumous journeys – to unparalleled popularity as an intercessor across medieval Europe, and thence to secular superstardom in distant Lapland – but it was good to know that a little part of him had not strayed so far from his beginnings.
Santa: A Life by Jeremy Seal (Picador, £14.99)
The Basilica of St Nicholas at Demre, the ruins at Patara, and St Nicholas Island are all open daily, with a local entrance fee payable.
Packages through Exclusive Escapes (020 8605 3500; www.hiddenturkey.com), Tapestry (020 8235 7777; www.tapestry.co.uk), Simpson Travel (0845 8116506: www.simpsontravel.com).
For independent travelers, flight-only deals to Dalaman or Antalya through Excel Airways (0870 169 0169; www.xl.com) or Turkish Airlines via Istanbul (020 7766 9300; www.turkishairlines.com).
For excellent local accommodation, book Beatrix Cottage, Kaya (£300 per week, sleeping 2) through www.buzzytravel.com or e-mail [email protected]. For the Patara Viewpoint, Gelemis, from £25 per night for a double room including breakfast, book at www.pataraviewpoint.com. More recommendations through Special Places to Stay; Turkey by Alastair Sawday (£11.99).
A week’s car hire through Explora (00 90 252 616 6890; [email protected]) from £200.
Visa: a £10 visa is payable on arrival in Turkey.
Information: www.gototurkey.co.uk; 0207 355 4207
Kaya’s ruin-littered olive groves, gardens and smallholdings enchanted me. The footpaths which threaded this hideaway valley often led to old monasteries or to ancient sarcophagae whose arched backs rose from the landscape like petrified barns. In the shadow of Levissi’s ruins, the valley’s atmospheric focus, stood a few outdoor family restaurants. I stopped at the Poseidon for an excellent gozleme or savoury pancake baked on an open hearth. Owls called as I walked the lanes back to my lodgings, a simply restored self-catering cottage called Beatrix whose garden was home to a donkey and more tortoises. It also had delightfully on-hand owners, John and Bea, who knew everybody and ran what must surely be Turkey’s only village croquet club.
Patara substantiated what Kaya had suggested; that the canny Nicholas had come to be associated with the pick of places along this coast. The ancient city of his birth lies a few yards above fifteen kilometers of pristine white sand beach. It so happens that Patara is also the birthplace of endangered loggerhead turtles who return in subsequent summers to lay their own eggs on the beach; bathers are continually warned against disturbing them. The turtles, in tandem with the teeming bird life in the marsh which was Patara’s long-silted harbour, have combined to prevent the developers landing a punch here when they have all but floored other beaches such as Oludeniz.
Nothing tangible remains of St Nicholas’ association with Patara; even so, the dune-swathed amphitheatre, the Roman gateway and the sunken streets make these among the most evocative of all Anatolia’s ruins. At the end of a hot afternoon clambering among fallen columns and capitols, I crossed the dunes to the beach for a cooling swim and a glass of sweet tea at the beach café. Then it was back to my lodgings at the Patara View Point Hotel, with its panoramic setting and swimming pool, and run with typically idiosyncratic Turkish charm by its owner, Muzaffer Otlu.
And so to Demre, Myra to the Byzantines, the hub of Nicholas’ cult. The statue of Santa Claus in the main square and the stalls of the hawkers could not disguise a stubbornly agricultural town largely unimpressed by Turkey’s tourism boom. A delicious irony, this, that while many theme parks, ski resorts and department store grottoes worldwide seasonally tout themselves as the real home of Santa, all that the real real one does is go about its business, seasonally disappearing beneath harvests of hot-housed tomatoes. Refreshing but hardly charming; unlike Kaya or Patara, you wouldn’t want to overnight here, and the absence of hotels ensures you won’t. You’ll find a range of accommodation at the likeable fishing port of Kas half an hour to the west, or the delightful waterside pansiyons at the low-key Kekova villages of Ucagiz and Kale.
St Nicholas’ basilica at Demre has been only partially excavated from the earthquakes and floods, abandonments and pirate raids of the centuries. It has no particular architectural merit, but this building-site complex of arcades and courtyards cocooning the nave remains a movingly impressive monument largely by virtue of its very survival. This patched-up wreck of a church conveys a tenacity to match that of its patron, Nicholas, who has proved the most adaptable of saints in his progress down the centuries.
Be sure to enquire about public access – uncertain at the time of going to press - to the basilica’s early frescoes. Recently restored, these are a rich representation of stories and episodes from the life of St Nicholas. A fascinating historical artifact, they constitute a twelfth-century hoarding board, helping to create a devotional ripple effect which spread the saint’s renown across Christendom.
I finished my Nicholas tour at Antalya, fast emerging from provincial obscurity as Turkey’s holiday playground. This boom city, with smart beach clubs, a much-vaunted minimalist resort hotel called Hillside Su and an attractive old city quarter, Kaleici, also has a magnificent archaeological museum. I admired the 2nd century statuary, ten-foot high marble gods and emperors from the nearby archaeological site at Perge, but had my mind on a smaller artifact. I eventually tracked it down; a tiny reliquary box containing some human bones said to belong to a certain saint. Nicholas might have made the greatest of posthumous journeys – to unparalleled popularity as an intercessor across medieval Europe, and thence to secular superstardom in distant Lapland – but it was good to know that a little part of him had not strayed so far from his beginnings.
Santa: A Life by Jeremy Seal (Picador, £14.99)
The Basilica of St Nicholas at Demre, the ruins at Patara, and St Nicholas Island are all open daily, with a local entrance fee payable.
Packages through Exclusive Escapes (020 8605 3500; www.hiddenturkey.com), Tapestry (020 8235 7777; www.tapestry.co.uk), Simpson Travel (0845 8116506: www.simpsontravel.com).
For independent travelers, flight-only deals to Dalaman or Antalya through Excel Airways (0870 169 0169; www.xl.com) or Turkish Airlines via Istanbul (020 7766 9300; www.turkishairlines.com).
For excellent local accommodation, book Beatrix Cottage, Kaya (£300 per week, sleeping 2) through www.buzzytravel.com or e-mail [email protected]. For the Patara Viewpoint, Gelemis, from £25 per night for a double room including breakfast, book at www.pataraviewpoint.com. More recommendations through Special Places to Stay; Turkey by Alastair Sawday (£11.99).
A week’s car hire through Explora (00 90 252 616 6890; [email protected]) from £200.
Visa: a £10 visa is payable on arrival in Turkey.
Information: www.gototurkey.co.uk; 0207 355 4207
