Clean Monday in Greece

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Today is Kathari Deftera ( clean monday) in Greece. It is the first day of the easter lent which lasts for 40 days. It is celebrated by eating a lot of lent allowed products, like tarama salad and octapus and calamari and shell fish and beans and salads etc, and a special bread called lagana, which is a large flat bread without rising ingredients. Lots of wine is also consumed.

It is called "clean Monday" because when people were very strict about lent, all utensils should be thoroughly cleaned from any contamination of meat or animal fat when entering the lent season.

It is also a day when we fly kites. It is a nice windy day, so the kite competitions will fare well. This is a "father children" bonding thing, because fathers usually had much more fun making the kite and flying it than the children who were finally allowed to hang on to the string .

It used to be, when I was young, that there existed kite marauders: they would attach razor blades on the tails of their kites and try to cut off the string of neighbouring kites. My body can still feel the desperate effort my father made, when we were both hanging on to our kite trying to avoid the razor blades.