The Carnival
Apokries or Carnival is the three weeks before Clean Monday when Lent begins. They are identified with the period of the Triodion, a moving period in the Orthodox Christian tradition from the Sunday of the Publican and Pharisee to the Sunday of the Tyrofagus or Tyrian.
Apokries means the stopping of meat-eating, as does the Latin word Carnival (Carneval, Carnevale, from the words Carne = meat and Vale = pass through).
These days the custom of feasting, entertainment, and "masquerade", of disguise, takes place, which has its roots in the Kronia "Louperkalia" and "Saturnalia" and in the most ancient "Dionysian celebrations" of the Greeks, where people disguised themselves, danced, sang and drank wine and the fun peaked in honor of Dionysus.
In the old days the beginning of the Triduum was announced with gunshots or with drums and tsampouna( traditional instrument alike bagpipes), while in many places the preacher would shout that Apokries was approaching so that people would make sure to get the necessary meat.
That is why the first week of Halloween is also called "Prophoni", from the habit of proclaiming its arrival.
The second week is called "Kreatini", because it was offered for meat, and the third week "Tyrini" or "Makarono", because during this week the believers offered koliva and pasta to the dead, the so-called "macaroni", from which the "macaroni"(greek pasta) took its name.
The Triodion was particularly noticeable on Tsiknopempti, when pigs were slaughtered in many places. Tsiknopempti is still today a focal point of the celebration of Apokries with the consumption of meat and various entertainment and masquerades events.
In the big cities, the carnival celebration is more or less standardized, but fortunately there are still many places in Greece where the customary celebration still retains forms that show the deeper roots of these joyful events.
After all, Apokries was not born in the city. In the countryside where from ancient times there were celebrations not only for the good harvest and health but also ceremonies that would drive away evil. The animalistic disguises, the big bells, and the deafening noises conjured up evil and brought luck.
Farmers, in the joyful climate of the Carnival, sense the changes of Nature and try to appease her with various actions to ensure fruitfulness in the fields, rich production, and good health.
The same effort for good health and a good harvest is expressed in the custom of the carnival fires, which were lit in squares and crossroads on the evening of the last Sunday.
Over the years, the carnival celebration of the countryside was enriched with new elements. Thus, in many areas today we find representations of wedding ceremonies or ceremonies that commemorate events that marked the history of the place, mainly from the years of the Turkish occupation.
In every region, every town and village has its own traditions and customs of Apokries, which fortunately have been preserved to this day.
Tsiknopempti
The word " Tsiknopempti" comes from the word "tsikna" (the smell of roasted meat) and the word "pempti" (Thursday).
It is the Thursday of the second week of the Triodium, the time when people prepare for the great fast of Easter Lent.
It is celebrated 11 days before Clean Monday and the reason it is celebrated on Thursday is that the Orthodox Church considers Wednesday and Friday as important days of fast.
Tsiknopempti gives households the opportunity to consume in a festive and joyful way whatever red meat they have left before the Lenten fast.
All over Greece, the roasting of meat has been established in houses, pavements and squares with a general festive mood for feasting and dancing.
Combined with the fact that Tsiknopempti is, essentially, the beginning of the Carnival events, since the next week is followed by Carnival and Clean Monday, it is a day of joy and fun.
On the evening of Tsiknopempti, people are used to dressing up and partying with dancing and singing in traditional taverns, dancing clubs, and home parties along with friends.
The custom is lost in the depths of the centuries, without knowing its exact origins.
However, it is thought to have originated from the Bacchic festivals of the ancient Greeks and Romans, who survived Christianity.
Apart from the traditional roasting of meat, each region of Greece has its own customs and traditions for Tsiknopempti.
In Corfu, the so-called "Corfiot Petegoletsia" are held. The word "Petegoletsia" means gossip. It takes place on the evening of Tsiknopempti, in Piazza near the location "Koukounara" of Corfu where a small theatre is set up and the locals play the role of gossip and whisper various stories in each other's ears.
Corfiot "Petegoletsia"
In Serres they light big fires and after roasting the meat, they jump over them.
In Komotini, engaged couples exchange edible gifts. The fiancé sends his fiancée a chicken, the kurko, and she sends baklava (greek dessert) and a stuffed chicken.
All this is related to the popular saying of the Greeks, that "love goes through the stomach"
In Ios, on the evening of Tsiknopempti, masqueraders dressed with sheep bells cross the town and visit houses and shops, while in Poros, tradition requires young people to steal a...spaghetti, which they will put under their pillow to see who they will marry.
In Thebes on Tsiknopempti the custom of the “Vlach wedding” begins with the matchmaking of two young people, continues with the wedding and ends on Clean Monday with the procession of the bride's dowry and the feast of the guests.
All of these proceedings are full of satirical frenzy, merriment, revelry and dancing.
The “Vlach Wedding of Thebes” is registered in the National Index of Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Greek Ministry of Culture and is a top event of Greek tradition that is presented extensively below.
The Patra Carnival
The Patra Carnival is both the largest and the oldest carnival event in Greece and one of the largest in the world in terms of carnival participation and history.
With 193 years of history, the Patras carnival is not a single event but a set of events that include dances, parades, hidden treasure hunts, a carnival for children, etc.
The events begin on 17 January and run until Clean Monday. The last weekend of Carnival culminates with the nightly parade of the crews on Saturday, the spectacular parade of chariots and crews on Sunday and finally, the ritual burning of the King Carnival at the pier of Agios Nikolaos in the northern port of Patras.
Its characteristic principles are spontaneity, improvisation, inspiration and volunteerism.
The creation of the Patras Carnival is due to the blending of various cultural elements: a) traditional carnival customs of Greece and Patras b) influences from Western Europe and especially Italy and the neighboring Ionian Islands c) innovations that emerged during carnival celebrations in Patras.
The History
The modern roots of the Patras Carnival date back to the beginning of the 19th century. Most opinions converge on the fact that the starting point of the Patras Carnival was the first carnival dance after the liberation, which was held in 1829 at the house of the merchant Moretti.
A decisive contribution to the development of the institution is considered to have been made by the Ionians, who flocked to Patras after the union of the Ionian Islands with Greece in 1864. It is believed that with their cheerfulness, their inventive mood and their liveliness, the islanders gave a new color to the carnival entertainments in Patras, which took place in taverns and cafes at that time.
Moreover, the city's position with the increasing prosperity of its port and the frequent contacts with the West and especially with Italy, with its famous carnivals such as the one in Venice, have contributed over the years to the shaping of the carnival so that even today it has several Mediterranean and western features.
Then, as a consequence of the prosperity of the city at the end of the 19th century, the carnival events became more stable.
The appearance of the first carnival floats dates back to the 1870s.
In the same decade, in 1872, the "Apollo" Theatre was built with contributions from rich raisin merchants and hosted carnival dances, just like today, which continues to play a central role in carnival events.
As the historian of the Carnival of Patras Nikos Politis testifies, during the era of Belle Époque, beautiful carnivals were organized in 1900, 1907 and 1909, with the participation of people of all social classes and origins for the first time.
In the next decade things are not favourable for the carnival, the constant wars and conflicts (Balkan wars, World War I, National Schism, Asia Minor campaign) send men to the front and bring to the city economic deprivation and misery. In the first post-war years the situation did not improve significantly, only sporadic events testify to the arrival of Carnival. An obvious exception is the impressive number and quality of floats and celebrations of the carnivals of 1938 and 1939. World War II and the ensuing civil war would bring a ten-year forced hiatus.
In the early 1950s, the first hesitant thoughts were made by the collective bodies of Patras for the organized revival of the carnival.
By the middle of the decade, the Patras Carnival had returned to the lives of the people of Patras and all Greeks, especially those who could afford (mainly wealthy Athenians) to travel to Patras to participate in the carnival. During the same period, the cinematographic lens captured moments of the carnival in newsreels and films of the Greek cinema.
In 1966 the carnival was put on a new basis. The journalist Nikos Mastorakis, after an invitation from the municipal authority, introduced the Hidden Treasure Hunt in Patras during the Carnival, in which 94 Patriots and visitors took part with their cars.
In 1974 the modern phase of the carnival begins, the carnivalists are persuaded to abandon their cars and parade on foot in the streets (until then only the floats were waving). The spectacle culminates, the duration of the parade reaches 5.30 hours where about 45,000 carnivalists travel 4.5 kilometers dancing turning Patras into a center of fun and entertainment. It is flooded by hundreds of thousands of visitors who arrive from all parts of Greece and beyond. Indicative of this is the fact that the intercity bus service departs every 5 minutes from Athens to Patras on the carnival weekend.
The Start of the annual Events
«Telalis» (Town crier) announces the start of the Patras Carnival events, strolling through the streets of the city on his musical float. It invites Patriots and all those who will be in Patras that day to magical encounters of joy and unexpected fun.
The Opening Ceremony takes place on a Saturday and always in conjunction with the feast of St. Anthony on January 17.
It usually consists of a variety of events including music, dance, acrobats, activities for young and old and collective games.
The events begin in the morning in selected parts of the city and culminate in the evening at George I Square. This is where the interest of the people is focused, where after the completion of the main event and the appearance of the King Carnival's float accompanied by a number of carnivalists, the Mayor of Patras declares the start of the Patras Carnival events.
The Carnival of the Little Ones is a separate and important part of the Patras Carnival as a continuation and evolution of the baby rally that was first organized in 1968.
On that day thousands of young carnivalists from Patras, but also from other cities in Greece, parade through the main streets of the city in groups according to their kindergarten, their school, their nursery school, their dance school. It is estimated that every year about 15,000 children and their escorts parade together.
It is one of the most vibrant and promising sections of the Patra Carnival and the nursery of tomorrow's carnivalists.
It is noteworthy that the Children's Carnival, the only one in Greece with so much duration and mass participation of children, is held in conditions of absolute safety for children, as the escorts of the groups and the animators, volunteers of the Municipality, parade with them.
The Hidden Treasure teams have a name as a group and a theme for their costume.
They either only participate in the parades or participate in the games and the hidden treasure competitions.
These games include questions from history, literature, mathematics, navigation exercises through hidden clues scattered throughout the city, art competitions of painting, pantomime, theatrical highlights and whatever else the game organisers can think of.
Bourboulias are dances where the women maintain their anonymity under a black domino and a black mask, while the men wear formal attire and choose their date, ignoring her identity, at least for that night.
This is a special event of the Patras Carnival that has no equal in Greece.
The Bourboulias are considered one of the oldest events, where the exact date of their beginning remains unknown to this day.
Sunday's Grand Parade.
Thousands of carnivalists color the Carnival capital with their fun and liveliness.
The Municipality's carnival floats are in the lead, followed by the carnival crews, many with their own floats and carnival structures.
The participation of carnivalists every year reaches 40,000 people who tirelessly follow a route of about 4 kilometres, crossing the main street of Patras. It lasts on average around 5.30 hours.
The biggest event of the Patras Carnival every year that is watched by tens of thousands of spectators on the sidewalks, balconies and stands and is televised, as was the Saturday parade by a national TV station.
The closing ceremony
After the end of the big parade, the fun continues to stimulate the mood of the carnivalists who flock to the pier of Agios Nikolaos to watch the Closing Ceremony.
Tradition has it that King Carnival surrenders to the fire in the middle of the sea followed by the bursting of fireworks. Its television broadcast carries the spirit of an explosive and magnificent celebration to every corner of the country.
The event usually includes dance shows, music concerts by well-known rock or pop bands, acrobatics and other surprises, with the Mayor of Patras thanking the carnivalists and visitors of the city for their participation, and symbolically giving the signal for the preparation of next year's carnival events.
Carnival customs all over Greece