Share it


Kea, which is also called Tzia, is the Cycladic island closest to Attica as it lays at the mouth of Cavo D’Oro. The island hosts a number of religious folk festivals, starting with the panigyri of Ayios Haralambos at Ioulida on February 10. It’s an important feast day as Ayios Haralambos is the island’s patron-saint and is said to have saved the island’s inhabitants from the plague in 1823. Apokria, or the last Sunday of carnival, is deeply rooted in the pre-Christian custom according to which revelers in disguises or fancy dress strolled the village dancing and singing accompanied by musicians playing tabounes and doubia. On June 13, the feast of the Holy Trinity is observed at Poles, on the southeastern coast, with a panigyri at a small, seaside church built on the ruins of an ancient shrine of Carthaia. On the feast’s eve, mules in brightly colored ribbons, transport bread, food, and other provisions for the feast. An area is set up by the sea for cleaning fish that is then prepared in the cooking area. After church services, tables are set in the church courtyard and guests treated to coffee and kolyva, a mix of crushed wheat berries, walnuts, almonds, pomegranate, sesame, cinnamon and sugar given at funerals and memorial services. This symbolizes the dead memorialized during the artoklasia or blessing. Pilgrims then sit at the “table of agapi” or love, which is blessed by the priest before the revelry begins—feasing to the sound of the tsabouna, a bagpipe-like instrument. Locals are accomplished dancers and the island’s ballos is the most unusual in the Aegean as partners don’t dance facing each other but “tied” together at the hands. As on most Cycladic islands, the klidonas is celebrated on the night of June 23 when a clay jug filled with the “silent water”, thus called because it was fetched from the well by a woman who did not speak the entire time, is left outdoors, under the stars, for the night. At the height of summer, on July 18, there is a panigyri at the Monastery of Ayia Marina. On August 8, the feast of Ayios Aimilianos is celebrated at a small church at Ayios Aimilianos beach on Koundouros bay. The feast of the Dormition of the Virgin on August 15 is celebrated with a large panigyri in the courtyard of the Monastery of Panayia Kastriani.
RELATIVE ARTICLES
comments powered by Disqus
Επιμελητήριο Κυκλάδων Επιμελητήριο Δωδεκανήσου
Copyright © 2024 Aegean Cuisine.
Find us also