Clean Monday
"Clean Monday" (Kathara Deftera), also known as Pure Monday, Ash Monday, Monday of Lent or Green Monday, is the first day of Great Lent throughout Eastern Christianity and is a moveable feast, falling on the sixth Monday before Palm Sunday which begins Holy Week, preceding Pascha Sunday.
This Monday also brings preceding Carnival celebrations to an end, inviting everyone to leave behind the ‘sinful’ attitudes associated with Carnival festivities and non-fasting foods, which were largely consumed during the last three weeks of the Carnival.
It is a national holiday across Greece and special events and activities take place in all towns and villages, which feature plenty of music, dancing and delicious vegetarian food, marking the start of this special Greek Orthodox period of fasting and contemplation.
"Saracosti", which is the great period of Lent before the Orthodox Easter takes its name from Tessaracoste, which comes from the word forty, which is the forty day period until Palm Sunday and then one more week until Easter day makes a total of 49 days of “fasting”. During this period we fast so that our bodies and spirits are “cleansed” to prepare for accepting the Resurrection.
During Saracosti, no meat or dairy food are eaten. Lenten food, usually consists of plenty of olives, taramasalata, Halva, vegetables, legumes and seafood, such as kalamari, octopus, shrimps, oysters, cuttlefish, mussels, lobsters etc. Fish is not allowed with the exception on two occasions: on the 25th of March (Annunciation of the Virgin Mary) and on Palm Sunday.
By the way, you can find a fine selection of "Sarakosti" related foods in our e-shop here.
Each part of Greece has its own traditions and the feast day.
"Clean Monday" is a day where families and friends celebrate with outdoor excursions, delicious fasting foods, as well as the widespread custom of flying kites.
Kali Sarakosti!
The theme of Clean Monday is set by the Old Testament reading appointed to be read at the Sixth Hour on this day (Isaiah 1:1–20), which says, in part:
Wash yourselves and ye shall be clean; put away the wicked ways from your souls before Mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well. Seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, consider the fatherless, and plead for the widow. Come then, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: Though your sins be as scarlet, I will make them white as snow; and though they be red like crimson, I will make them white as wool (vv. 16–18).
