Clean Monday - Lent

Clean Monday, Pure Monday, Lent Monday, or Ash Monday, is of Christian origins, meaning spiritual and physical purification. It's a public holiday in Greece, marking the end of the festive carnival season and the beginning of 40-day period of Great Lent, known as Sarakosti. For most Greeks, celebrating Clean Monday means going to the hillside or by the sea to fly kites and enjoy a fasting picnic - these celebrations are also called Koulouma, a word that comes from the Latin cumulus, which means both abundance and end. Thus the Koulouma stand for the culmination of the carnival period and also the beginning of the season of Lent. 

Since it marks the beginning of the fasting period, the consumption of meat, eggs and dairy is traditionally forbidden, this first day of the Eastern Orthodox Christian Lent requires the consumption of shellfish, taramosalata (fish roe dip), a special unleavened flat bread called lagana, dolmadakia (vine leaves stuffed with rice), gigandes (white beans in tomato sauce) and other beans, and halva (tahini dessert).

This year it fell on the 3rd of March and we decided to celebrate on Pani Hill, the hill that is in our area, where a lot of people congregate every year to fly their kites and to have picnics, as well as listen to music and dance.

We set off around mid-day, past our local outdoor gym

taking at first the same route we did when we went to visit the community art gallery

and then it was uphill all the way

until we reached the steps that lead to the park that is on Pani Hill

we walked along the path

in the middle of the pine trees and wild flowers

view of the sea and Piraeus

but also a bit to the right, view of Athens, as it's surrounded by mountains on three sides

we continued, all the way uphill

We arrived at the first plateau up the hill. By now, normally, the sky would be full of kites, but it was very windy, and we did not hold out much hope of seeing many

So we stopped to look at the north view, where the Hymettus mountain range spreads out

and then moved to the next peak, hoping to see some kites

great view of the sea in the South from here

aha! a woman bravely struggling with the wind, trying to get her kite up

The Southern suburbs (including where we live) and the sea at our feet, and another kite flyer

and then, the highest peak

another look to the South





and one to the North

and then the descent, to where the celebrations were taking place

This is a common sight on Clean Monday, kites being caught on the wires

We reached the bottom

looked up at the top of the hill

a few kites up in the sky

and then joined the hundreds of people who had come up here to celebrate

some had even brought hammocks with them

some were having picnics

some were listening to the band which is what we did for a while

and some were dancing traditional Greek dances

some were flying kites which was much easier here because it wasn't that high

and some were still wearing their Carnival costumes even though the carnival season was over, because they just couldn't let go.

We stayed for quite a while, it was such a lovely atmosphere. We had an ice cream, watched people having fun

We eventually walked back home, past a painting of John Lennon on an electricity box - one I had not seen before. It was another great day.