Around Agios Nikolaos the summer is counted in glentia: from late July to late August the villages of Lasithi set out tables in their schoolyards and the lyra players of eastern Crete play until dawn.
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May - September
Panigiria run from May to September, and the season peaks at Dekapentavgoustos - the Dormition, on 15 August - when most villages hold their feast. Each programme is set close to its own saint's day, so the list fills late and empties out of season.
The best-known gathering point is Kritsa, a short drive above the town, where the Byzantine church of Panagia Kera and its frescoes stand at the edge of the village. On August 15 the feast is set up in the primary school courtyard, with lyra, laouto and mantinades - improvised rhyming couplets - traded between the tables, and over the summer the village associations also hold their own mizithropita evening, named after the local soft-cheese pie. Next door in Kroustas an almond festival comes round each summer with food and Cretan music, and in Limnes the patron saint, Agia Marina, is honoured on July 17. Up on the Lasithi Plateau, with its windmills and the Dictaean Cave at Psychro, Tzermiado holds its Potato Festival on the first weekend after August 15, three days in which tonnes of the plateau's best-known crop are cooked.
The town itself saves its big night for spring. On Easter night an effigy of Judas is set on a raft in the middle of Lake Voulismeni and burned amid fireworks and firecrackers, with the whole town gathered around the water - a custom moved onto the lake in 1976, having until then been done in the streets by the town's young people. On Holy Thursday households bake kalitsounia and dye eggs. In winter, from October to Christmas, the kazanemata - the distilling of raki - gather friends around the copper stills, and on December 6 the town honours its patron, Saint Nicholas.
In Kritsa, where the glenti takes place in the primary school courtyard with live Cretan music, and in many Lasithi villages that celebrate the Virgin on those days. See the current calendar on Mood.
On Easter night, after the Resurrection service. The effigy is set on a raft in the middle of Lake Voulismeni and burned amid fireworks while crowds watch from the shore.
It is held in Tzermiado, usually on the first weekend after August 15, over three days of food, music and dancing. Each year's dates are listed on Mood.
