Custom or festival
St John’s Eve and the Klidonas
Bonfires everyone jumps, the “silent water” and the fortunes of the Klidonas, one of the island’s liveliest customs.
- 23 and 24 June
On 24 June the Church celebrates the birth of St John the Baptist, a day that falls with the midsummer sun. On Elafonisos the feast keeps old customs alive.
The bonfires
On the eve, bonfires are lit and the May wreaths are burned with the branches. Young and old jump over the fire three times, competing to jump the highest.
The Klidonas
The same evening three unmarried girls take a jug to the well for the “silent water”: they speak to no one the whole way. The boys tease them to make them talk; if they do, they pour the water away and go back.
Into the water go the “fortunes”, unripe fruit of the season, each carved with someone’s initials. They cover the jug with a red cloth, lock it with a big key and leave it outside under the stars.
On the afternoon of the feast they “open” the Klidonas in front of friends and neighbours, with the old couplet calling it open by the grace of St John. A young man draws the fortunes one by one, and for each one the guests recite a love couplet, said to foretell its owner’s luck.
Then the girls go out into the neighbourhood with a mouthful of water from the Klidonas, and the first man’s name they hear, they say, will be their husband’s. They also eat a very salty pie before bed: whoever brings them water in their dreams will be their future husband.
