The Greek Carnival : Apokries & Clean Monday

With a very rich and diverse culture, Greece is a country with traditions and customs passed down from generation to generation. These traditions reflect the country’s past and are one of the things that make the country so interesting and enjoyable. Contemporary Greek culture reflect Greece’s location at the crossing point where the West meets the East and the country’s great and turbulent history.

Greece’s Carnival season known as "Apokries" is mainly a period of masquerading, but also eating, drinking and dancing. Traditionally, it begins ten weeks before Greek Orthodox Easter and culminates on the weekend before "Clean Monday," (Ash Monday) the first day of Lent. "Apokria", literally means “goodbye” to the period of meat-eating, or abstinence from meat (Apo-kreo, meaning away from meat).

Carnival officially begins on a Saturday evening with the "opening of the Triodion," the Lenten Triodion, as it is called - which a liturgical book of the Orthodox Church that contains hymns with three odes and begins to be chanted on the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee through Holy Saturday.

The last Sunday of the Carnival period is known as Cheesefare Sunday or Tyrofagos as only dairy products can be consumed on this day. Cheesefare Sunday is the final day of pre-Lent, as the Monday following -known as Clean or Ash Monday- marks the beginning of Great Lent. During the weekend preceding Clean Monday, carnival celebrations around Greece culminate with vigorous parades, masquerade parties, reviving many traditional customs in different parts of the country, and proving that carnival in Greece is closely related to the cultural heritage of each region.

Clean (or Ash) Monday is a public holiday in Greece which marks the end of the carnival festive season and the start of Lent or the period of fasting until Easter.

Weather permiting, people spend Clean Monday outdoors, organizing picnics while children fly kites. Since it marks the beginning of the fasting period special food is eaten on this day.

Clean Monday, however, is not only associated with eating fasting products, but features also many traditions being held all over Greece. Traditionally, as Clean Monday is considered to mark the beginning of the spring season, Young people and adults organize excursions to open areas, so as to fill the skies with their kites. Many traditional workshops are involved in making kites for over 70 years now. Although the wooden kites have been replaced by plastic ones, the kite-making handcraft still has its own secrets. A light wooden frame on a paper body, cords on the balances and a single cord on the tail make up for the perfect kite, ready to carry children and grown-ups off their feet.

Apart from kite flying, many areas in Greece maintain their own regional customs. In Thebes, an old custom dating from 1830, called the “Vlach Wedding,” — in reference to the matchmaking of the time — is revived each year, with all participants joining the festivities with satirical songs and lots of dancing. In the village Mesta on the Greek island of Chios, according to another Clean Monday custom, which bears its roots from the period of Ottoman Greece, the village is invaded by an Ottoman military officer along with his troops, who after gathering all residents to the central square, makes them pay a fine for the charges brought against them. The collected money is then given as tribute to the cultural association of the village.

The feast of Clean Monday and all associated traditions and celebrations are in the hearts of the Greek people, as they provide an opportunity for leisure and escaping from the daily routine, while coming in contact with nature and the country’s cultural heritage.