Public Holidays and Events in North and South Cyprus

Public holidays in the South

In the South, there is near-complete overlap between religious and bank holidays, so of the dates below official business is only conducted (after a fashion) on Katak-lysmos. When these dates fall on a Sunday, the subsequent Monday is usually a public holiday -in the case of Easter, the following Tuesday is also a bank holiday, as is Good Friday and part of Maundy Thursday. Shops do stay open on Good Friday and Holy Saturday morning, but then remain shut until Wednesday moming except in tourist areas, so beware.

Religious holidays in the South

New Year's Day in Cyprus is the feast day of Ayios Vassffios (St Basil, and the evening before. most homes bake a vasilopitta or cake containing a coin bringing good luck to the person finding it in their slice. The saint is also the Orthodox equivalent of Santa Claus, and gifts are exchanged on this day, though see the note below about Christmas.

In the Orthodox Church, Epiphany marks the baptism of Christ in the Jordan, and the conjunction of the Holy Trinity; the Greek name Ta TheofBnia refers to the resulting inner illumination. Holy water fonts in churches are blessed to banish the kalikand-zari demons said to run amok on earth after Christmas. As a finale at seaside locations, a local bishop hurls a crucifix out over the water, and young men swim for the honour of recovering it.

Clean Monday comes at the end of the ten days of Carnival, the occasion for fancy- dress balls and parades, most notably in Limassol. In rural areas, the day also signals the beginning of a strict seven-week absten- tion from animal products for the devout.

March 25 is usually billed as "Greek National Day". but is more properly the feast of Evan- gelismos or the Annunciation. Observance of Easter starts early in Holy Week. and the island's small Catholic and Armenian communities celebrate in tandem with the Orthodox majority. The most conspicuous customs are the dyeing red of hard-boiled eggs on Maundy Thursday, the baking of special holiday cakes such as ffaounes (which actually transgress the Lenten fast with their egg-and-cheese content) and on Good Friday eve the solemn procession of the Epitalios or Christ's funeral bier in each parish, whose women provide its elaborate floral decoration.

In Pafos town, for example, at least two of these are paraded solemnly through the streets, preceded by an intimidating military escort and youth bands playing New-Orleans-ish cortege themes, until they meet near the central park at about 10.30pm, where the local bishop presides over a brief service. On Saturday evening, huge bonfires are set -giving rise to the word Lambri, the alias for Easter in Cypriot dialect -before the spectacular midnight Anastasi or Resurrection mass. Not everyone will fit into the confines of a typical village church, so crowds gather in the courtyard, around the embers of the fire. Observance is pretty casual, even by Greek rural standards; the noise of high-decibel fireworks set off by teenagers -everything from Roman candles to dynamite left over from the Limni mine in Tillyria -all but drowns out the liturgy, such that in one year early in the 1990s the priest at Neokhorio village on the Akamas peninsula refused to proceed with the service.

Things calm down temporarily at midnight, when the officiating priest appears from behind the altar screen bearing a lighted candle and the news of eternal life for believers, and soon church interiors and court-yards are ablaze with the flame passed from worshipper to worshipper. The skyline of the larger towns will be illuminated now by spectacular fireworks displays -the wealthier the municipality the better. It is considered good luck to get your candle home still alight, to trace a soot-cross over the door lintel; then the Lenten fast is broken with avgolemono soup, and family members crack their red- dyed eggs against each other (owner of the last unbroken egg "wins").

Kataklysmos or the Festival of the Flood, fifty days after Easter, is unique to Cyprus; elsewhere in the Orthodox world it is merely Whit Monday or the Feast of the Holy Spirit, but here it's a pretext for several days of popular events: At all coastal towns people crowd into the sea and sprinkle each other with water; the festival ostensibly commemorates the salvation of Noah and his family from the Rood, but it's likely a vestige of a much older pagan rite in honour of Aphrodite's birth, or perhaps her purification after sleeping with Adonis.

Christmas (Khristouyenna) is relatively subdued in Cyprus, though inevitably European-style commercialization -including house illuminations and plastic Santas -has made inroads. The most durable old custom is that of the ka/anda or carols, sung by children going door-to-door accompanying themselves on a triangle. It's worth noting that many establishments (restaurants and KEO brewery tours, for example) seem to shut down between Christmas and New Year, opening only sporadically between January 1 and 6.

Other events In the South

In addition to the strictly ecclesiastical holidays, municipalities and tourist boards lay on a number of other events, with a steady eye on the foreign audience. The most reliable of these include the May Anthistiria or Flower Festivals, best in mid-May at Larnaca and Pafos; the Shakespeare Festival preced- ing Cyprus Music Days, at Kourion's ancient theatre during late June/early July; the Umassol and Larnaca municipal festivals in July; the Pafos festival of music, theatre and dance staged in the ancient odeion and medieval castle from July to September; the Ayia Napa festival in late September; and the Limassol Wine Festival, with free tast- ing sessions in the central park, during the first half of September. If you're determined to coincide with any or all of these, get a copy of the GTO's annual Ust of Events or the monthly update produced at each local tourist office.

Public holidays in the North

In the North, the holiday calendar is again a mix of religious holidays and official, patriotic commemorations, many imported from TurKey. All religious feasts recede eleven days yearly in the western calendar (12 in a leap year) because of the lunar nature of the Muslim calendar; however Mure dates of festivals as given on Islamic websites are provisional, owing to factors such as when the moon is sighted and the international dateline, so you should expect variance of up to a day in the ranges given in the box.

Unlike in the South, there's just not the budget or inclination for laying on big-theme secular bashes. Surviving, reliable and prestigious cultural festivals include the Bellapais Music Festival (late May to late June), with performances by name artists in the eponymous abbey, and the Famagusta International Festival, featuring more varied acts from late June to mid-July. Additionally, there are occasional folkloric performances at the castles of Famagusta and Kyrenia, and festivals on the Mesarya (Mesaorfa) linked to the harvest of various crops, especially the Gozeiyurt Orange Festival in mid-May.

The official holidays of the North are fairly self-explanatory, though a word on the movable religious feasts is in order. Seker Bayrami marks the end of the fasting month of Ramazan (Ramadan), and is celebrated with family get-togethers and the distribution of presents and sweets to visitors. At the northern outskirts of Nicosia, there's a fun-fair on purpose-built grounds, with "luna-parK" rides for kids, and traditional foods and crafts on sale. Kurban Bayraml commemorates the thwarted sacrifice of Ishmael by Abraham -a Koranic version of the Abraham-and-Isaac story -and used to be distinguished by the dispatch and roast- ing of vast numbers of sheep; the custom is now on the wane in Cyprus, among native- born Turkish Cypriots anyway.

By their own admission, Turkish Cypriots are among the laxest Muslims world-wide in terms of observance -few set foot in a mosque on any given Friday -but almost everybody makes some effort to observe Ramazan by swearing off booze for the duration (a major sacrifice, given some pretty hard drinking habits) and food during daylight hours, which means outside of Kyrenia many restaurants shut at midday, especially if the fasting month falls during the tourist off. season. This, and the fact that everyone eats in to save up money for expensive nights out on Arne, the first evening of the Seker Bayraml festivity, makes Ramazan a rather dull time to travel. Restaurants are particularly empty on the fifth evening before Seker Bayraml, known as Kadir Gecesi or the night the Koran was revealed to Muhammad. Most people stay home then, read. ing the Koran and praying; it's believed that prayers on this night have a special efficacy. Many, if not most, Turkish Cypriots do attend mosque services on Seker Bayrami and Kurban Bayrami.