True story. In our family, October is baby boom season. My grandfather, my mother, me, my niece, my granddaughter, all born in October. Every generation, same pattern. Back then, before Netflix and cell phones, there was clearly plenty of time over the Christmas holidays for… how shall I put it… “planting seeds.”
Let’s just say: no streaming, no scrolling, no Wi-Fi — just candlelight, wine, and the true spirit of togetherness. Nine months later, voilà! Another October baby.
If you do the math, December holidays are the unofficial Greek fertility festival. Move over Saint Valentine, we have Saint Nicholas.
Another true story.Years ago, we were vacationing in Koufonisia, a tiny Cycladic island that, back then, few people outside Greece had even heard of. You can walk across the island in flip-flops before your frappe melts.
So imagine our surprise when we saw signs for a Middle School and High School.Most Greek islands can barely keep one elementary school open. Antikythira, for example, has a mayor who offers subsidies to any family with kids willing to move there, just to keep their lone school alive.
But Koufonisia? They had a full education system. How?
Well, in 1980, Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou of PASOK connected the island to the electric grid. Before that? No electricity.
And what happens before the lights finally come on and the population was living in the dark after sunset? Let’s just say… people got busy.
Thus, the great Koufonisia Baby Boom before the 1980s. No mystery, just electricity.
Fast forward to today. Greece, once the land of family dinners that seat 14 cousins, three yiayiás, and at least one mysterious “Uncle from Chicago,” is quietly running out of children.
We’ve lost roughly half a million people in the last decade, about the population of Thessaloniki’s coffee drinkers on a Sunday morning.
While we joke about candlelit baby booms, Greece today faces the opposite problem, a baby bust.
According to recent reports:
Greece’s population has dropped by nearly 500,000 people over the past decade.
The 2021 census recorded fewer than 10.5 million residents, down 3.1% from 2011.
Forecasts suggest the country could lose another 1.3 to 1.5 million people by 2050.
Births are at record lows, and youth emigration remains high, the classic “brain drain.”
The birth rate is so low that the government has been offering tax breaks, cash bonuses, childcare vouchers, even taxi licenses (and possibly a free freddo per diaper) to families who have more kids. Large families, the “polyteknous” (someone who has many kids) are national heroes, though, judging by the paperwork they need to manage each child, they might also need a dedicated accountant and a priest on retainer.
Meanwhile, villages are shrinking, schools are closing, and the average age keeps rising. Greece may soon be the only place where the words “youth movement” refer to someone switching from a walker to a cane with wheels.
So here’s my modest proposal:Forget high-tech economic strategies. Just unplug the Wi-Fi for one week every December. National blackout.
If history, and my family, are any indication, we’ll be back to full population in no time.
People, let’s get… busy.
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I share some true and some not true (but truly Greek) stories from life between tsipouro and Wi-Fi. And who knows, maybe by next October, there’ll be a few new names to add to the family list.
