Kyra Sarakosti - Lady Lent

A custom that is almost lost is that of Lady Lent

The period of the Great Lent reached.

A custom that is almost lost is that of Lady Lent.
This is a peculiar calendar in which they measured the weeks of Lent's fasting.

Kyra Sarakosti (The Lady Lent) functioned as an improvised calendar that helped "the old ones" count the weeks that ran from the Clean Monday to the Holy Week.

Kyra Sarakosti in most areas was a cartoon painting. It depicted a woman with crossed hands, prayer, without mouth, due to fasting, and seven legs representing the seven weeks of the Great Lent.

All this because the period until Easter essentially means turning into our inner world in order to purify through fasting, not just our food but also our bad habits. We do not see, we do not hear and we do not comment on what others are doing, but we turn our attention to our own improvement.

Every Saturday, starting on the Sabbath following the Clean Monday, Kyra Sarakosti "lost" one foot. The last one, which was cut off in the great Sabbath, was placed in some places in the Bread of Resurrection (Christopsomo) and to anyone who was given, brought him good luck, something like the Vassilopita flint.

In other areas, this piece of paper was good enough to cover it on a dry fig. They put the fig together with others, and anyone who found it was considered to have brought him good luck.

How do you make it
1. Print the Lady Lent that you like
2. Cut the figure
3. Paint it
4. Paste it into your refrigerator

• Then, on a Saturday, you cut one leg up to the Holy Saturday and you cut the last one.
• It is a very beautiful way to teach children about Lent and to count the days until Easter.

In some areas, Kyra Sarakosti could not have been made of paper, but of dough.
The dough was made with flour, salt and water. The process was here as well as the paper.

Make salty, a very nice material because it has too much salt not to spoil for too long - it has the properties of clay or plasticine.

• Preheat our oven to 160 ° C in the air.
• Put the dough materials in a bowl and knead until it becomes a nice elastic dough.
• We love the Lady Lady with the dough by making her face, her body, her skirt, her legs and then decorating her as we want.
• Put it in a baking pan on which we have put labels.
• Bake for 20-30 minutes.
• We care to dry, not to cook.

This is a very easy dough which, in order to be made, may want to add some more water which we put carefully and little by little.
It is not eaten!

A variation of the custom of the Lady Lent is made of cloth and filled with feathers.

The following lyrics have been written for Kyra Sarakosti:

The Lady Lent
which is customary old
our grandmothers made it
with flour and water!

For her gem they wore
in the head of the cross
and her mouth was forgotten
why bother long!

And they counted the days
with her seven feet
they did one week,
until Easter!