Chios celebrates at two speeds: the summer saint's day feasts, with cauldrons on the boil from the morning, and the Carnival and Easter customs that have made the island known across Greece.
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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.
A summer panigiri on Chios has a fixed menu: goat in tomato sauce with rice, cooked in huge cauldrons. At Viki, on the slopes of Mount Pelinaio, the August 15 feast runs for three nights and the goat risotto is handed out after the liturgy. In the mastic villages of the south - built like fortresses to guard the mastic harvest from pirates - the big one is Pyrgi: three days around August 15, with a second feast on August 23, in the square beneath the black-and-white xysta patterns scratched into the house fronts and the church. This is where the Pyrgousikos is danced, fast and whirling, pulling locals and visitors alike into the circle. Olympi and Mesta also keep August 15, while in the north Kardamyla and Lagada celebrate on August 14, Pityos on the 14th and 15th, and the villages of Amani and Volissos fill their squares through the whole of August.
July belongs to Agia Markella, the island's patron saint, born at Volissos. On July 22 thousands of pilgrims come down to her chapel on the sand of Volissos bay, where local belief holds that her blood appears on the rocks from which holy water springs. Kalamoti celebrates Agia Kyriaki on July 7 and Agia Paraskevi on July 26, and Kallimasia keeps Agios Aimilianos on August 8, with the party down on the beach of the same name. Mesta also has an autumn feast, the Taxiarchs, on November 8.
Outside summer, Chios has customs found nowhere else. On Clean Monday, the first day of Lent, Olympi, Mesta, Pyrgi and Lithi stage the Agas, a satire of an Ottoman judge dating to around 1830-1840: a villager in costume tries and sentences anyone who crosses his path, with music and dancing all day. On the last Sunday of Carnival, Thymiana re-enacts a victory over pirates in the Mostra, with the talimi, a warrior dance with large swords, and Volissos dances the Diplos in double chains. On Easter Saturday night in Vrontados, the parishes of Agios Markos and Panagia Ereithiani fire thousands of home-made rockets at each other - the targets are the dome of Agios Markos and the clock of Ereithiani. On New Year's Eve in Chios town, children sing carols carrying model ships.
The three-day feast at Pyrgi around August 15 with the Pyrgousikos dance, the three nights of August 15 at Viki, and Agia Markella at Volissos on July 22, the pilgrimage of the island's patron saint. See the current programme on Mood.
The traditional dish is goat in tomato sauce with rice, cooked in large cauldrons. At Viki it is served as a goat risotto after the August 15 liturgy.
On Easter Saturday night in Vrontados, between the parishes of Agios Markos and Panagia Ereithiani. The rockets are made by the parishes themselves over the preceding months.
