AYIA NAPA FLOOD & FISH FESTIVALS 2013
Sunday 23 June 2013
10:00 – 14:00 Water Sport Games & Jet Ski Shows
20:00 Ayia Napa Children Choir
20:20 Cyprus – Island Traditional Dances by Ayia Napa Municipal Dancing Group
21:20 Greeting by the Mayor of Ayia Napa Mr. Yiannis Karousos
** Fireworks show
21:30 Music Concert by the Greek Singer GLYKERIA
Monday 24 June 2013
10:00 – 13:00 1st Ayia Napa Water Festival
The water has the ability to clean and refresh. That’s why people enjoy so much to come in contact with water. Humans and young people especially, believed that on the day of the flood celebration, throwing water at each other water could be beneficial for their wellness. People thought that the water on that day protects the body from various skin diseases such as scabies, etc.
Therefore, Ayia Napa Municipality organizes the First Water Festival, a festival of fun, water games using buckets, water pistols and other objects related to water...a nice game of joy and fun!
19:30 Ayia Napa Municipal Dancing Group
20:00 Folk Poets and Singers: «Tsatista» and Love songs
21:30 Music Concert by the Greek Singers YIANNIS VARDIS & GEORGE LIANOS
AYIA NAPA FISH FESTIVAL
Ayia Napa Municipality, being loyal to the traditions and the customs and traditions of our island, introduces this year the Fish Festival, along with the celebrations of the Flood Festival. It is an effort to revive an old party celebration of the fish, taking place in Ayia Napa harbour every August. On that fish festivity, the fishermen of the village were generously offered fishes to villagers and to any other visitor of the village. Everyone had the opportunity to taste and enjoy fishes and other seafood, cooked with plenty of different ways that could only be accomplished by pure people who loved the seductress sea. The Fish Festival was given the opportunity of the villagers to meet each other for fun, to celebrate the end of summer and a way that fishermen used to show to the local market how thankful they were.
HISTORY OF KATAKLYSMOS - FLOOD FESTIVAL
Kataklysmos is a feast celebrated only in Cyprus. By the word Kataklysmos reference is made to the biblical flood by which God destroyed all living creatures on earth. Reference is also made to the ancient Greek tradition and to the Greek myth of Deukalion and Pyrra. In both cases all humanity is extinguished apart from a faithful couple, due to sin, and more moral, new generation of man is recreated.
Many scholars attribute Kataklysmos celebration to worship of Aphrodite and to the Aphrodisia festival, which encompassed cleansing baths, athletic competitions and song/poetry competitions. Based on the fact that Aphrodisia were not in the least connected with the worship of the dead souls, nor with the resurrection of any God, the scholar Kyriakos Hatzioannou maintains that Kataklysmos is clearly more connected with the Anthesteria Festival. He refers to extraordinarily similar elements and festivities between the two and ends up proving that Kataklysmos and the Anthesteria Festival are one and the same feast under different names. Kataklysmos is celebrated 50 days after Christ resurrection, exactly as the opening of the Anthesteria occurred 50 days after the Dionysia which were celebrated in honour of the resurrected Dionyssus.
The first day of the Anthesteria was called Pithoigia (opening of the vessels) This day was considered as the day when the Souls of the dead were freed. The “Dead Soul’s Saturday” of the contemporary Kataklysmos celebrations is devoted to the dead who are believed to roam free for 50 days, coming in direct contact with the living.
During the second day of the Anthesteria which was called “Choes” water libations and a “plate of all-seeds,” (“panspermia” made of wheat, raisons, dried nuts, sesame, and pomegranate seeds) were offered to the dead, exactly as the contemporary post-Christian “kollyva” are offered on the “Dead Soul’s Saturday”.
The third day of Anthesteria included a special feast devoted to the dead of the Deukalion Flood, the Hydrophoria (etym, Transportation of water). This cathartic water was considered as purifying from the miasma of the contact with the Dead Souls.
The Anthropologist, Rousounides, upholds that the Cypriot customs of Kataklysmos are related more to the need for catharsis and the purification through the “Water of Life” at the point of transition from the season of Spring to the season of Summer. The “undefiled” sea was considered the best cathartic means, hence every Cypriot considers it his duty to visit the Ais-Yialos (Holy Sea) and bathe there or at least to wash with water as many friends and family as possible during Kataklysmos
