Local Festivals & Events

The name “Apokreas” derivies from the Greek phrase Apoxh apo kreas, literally meaning “goodbye to meat.”

While not quite as prominent as Easter, or Pascha, Christmas is still an important holiday celebrated on Hydra, as witnessed by the festive lights and other decorations adorning the harbor, as well as lamp posts, railings, and shop and house windows throughout the town.

Clean Monday (Καθαρά Δευτέρα) marks the beginning of Lent in the Greek Orthodox Church.

On Good Friday (Μεγάλη Παρασκευή) villagers carry candles and follow the procession of the Epitaph. After the Epitaph (or Christ’s funeral bier), decorated with flowers, has been processed all over the town, it ends up to the port and the people who carry it get it in the sea, so that both the people and the sea are blessed by the Holy Epitaph.

Epiphany (ἐπιφάνεια, meaning “manifestation”) or Theophany (Θεοφάνεια, meaning “vision of God”) is an Orthodox feast day that commemorates Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan River, which is seen as his manifestation to the world as the Son of God.

On March 25, Greeks celebrate the Greek National Anniversary, a major religious holiday with military parades in the larger towns and cities, celebrating Greece’s victory in the war of Independence against the Turks, who had occupied the country for 400 years.

In late August, the Municipality of Hydra organizes a commemoration of the death of the first president of the Greek Republic, Hydriot Admiral Pavlos Kondouriotis.

In the days before this national holiday, the Greeks’ version of Labor Day, locals traditionally gather colorful wild spring flowers from the hillsides and fashion them into wreaths for their homes.

Hydra is famed for its Miaoulia festival, held in late June to commemorate Admiral Andreas Miaoulis, an important Hydriot naval commander in the Greek War of Independence (1821–1827), and his leadership in the Battle of Elder, in which about 75 Greek merchant ships, converted into warships with 800 cannon, destroyed the huge Turkish-Egyptian fleet of Ibrahim Pasha Chosref, which comprised more than 130 warships with in the neighborhood of 2,500 guns and 4,000 men.

New Year’s Day (Πρωτοχρονιά) is also celebrated ecclesiastically as the feast of St. Basil the Great and the Circumcision of Christ.

Oxi Day commemorates the rejection by Greek prime minister Ioannis Metaxas (r. August 4, 1936—January 29, 1941) of the ultimatum, made by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini on October 28, 1940, demanding that Greece allow Axis forces to enter Greek territory and occupy certain unspecified “strategic locations” or otherwise face war.

Hydra hosts two annual three-day regattas that mark the beginning and end of the racing season. The first, held on the weekend before Independence Day, or March 25, is organized by the Hellenic Offshore Racing Club and heralds the beginning of the summer. The second, held on the weekend before Oxi Day, or October 28, is organized by the Historical Yacht Club of Greece.