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What are those beads?
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group of Greeks, or perhaps just one for a long enough period of time, you may have seen a
string of beads being masterfully manipulated in their hands. The beads
are called komboloi (pronounced come-bo-loy, with the accent on the last syllable) or
worry beads. The word komboloi comes from the word kombos, meaning knot,
specifically a large number of knots, and loi, meaning a group that sticks
together.
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Komboloi come in all sizes, colors and materials. The traditional,
however, is of an amber color. |
The beads have no special
religious significance, but are used to release tension and stress.
What are their origins? Here are a few of the theories:
- Worry beads started on Mount Athos in northern Greece, where strands of beads are
made of woolen knots tied on a string at regular intervals. These knotted prayer
strings are called komboskini. Komboloi or komboskini are still used to count
prayers by the monks in the monasteries on Mount Athos. The monks make their worry beads
out of handy, inexpensive materials such as wood, shells, hazelnuts and olive pits.
- Worry beads came across the Aegean Sea from Asia Minor. While the
Turks occupied Greece after the fall of Constantinople, from 1453 to 1821, the rebellious
Greeks used to mock the occupying Turks as they used strands of 40 beads for prayer.
The beads then simply took a Greek form.
- According to Katerina Agrafioti in a article she wrote for Greece's English
monthly, The Athenian, "Komboloi arrived in Greece following the Asia Minor
debacle, brought by a family seeking refuge here in the 1920s. Opening a shop in
Kokkinia, a working-class neighborhood of Piraeus, the family began producing the first
truly Greek worry beads."
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