Greek treats

Ah, the fair... I love the paniyiri... the claustrophobic streets, the crazy clashes of culture, commercial and religious, and the treats.  Here are a few of my favorites:

Frying the loukoumades (fried dough)

The toppings

Little bites of deliciousness!

This is a mystery to me... the traditional red rooster lollipop.  Why is it a rooster?

The rooster lollipop is interesting.  I've had Greek friends who say they have been around forever, and when I tried to do some research, I found....nothing.  I tried academic databases, but got only some stories about a current company trying to trademark the name because it is a "translation" of a vulgar phrase (you'll have to guess... hint: if a regular lollipop is also called a sucker...)  Even Google yielded very little.  One site was an American company called Lollipop Rooster, and is a store founded by a Ukranian family.  Another is a site that explores everyday items from the Soviet past, which claims that the rooster lollipop is 500 years old. This suggests perhaps it is regional, Balkan, or Eastern European, not just a Greek motif. But other than that... nothing is turning up. I asked some Greek friends, who thought it was from the 1950s.  One said that because there weren't a lot of toys, Greek children would play with the lollipop and then get to eat it, so it did double duty.  Another told me that families were large and you need money to go to a paniyiri, so not all children were taken.  She told me a story about her mother who was always promised a trip to the paniyiri when it came to a particular neighboring village.  The little girl waited and waited, and only later realized that there was no paniyiri in that village.  That story supports the idea of a two-for-one toy/treat, though that still doesn't explain why it is a rooster and not something else.  The final idea was that it may be old-fashioned cross-marketing.  The next line of inquiry is into folktales to see if there are any about roosters that might explain the choice.

Here it is on an ancient pot in Chios!