Tradition is still important for Sifnos
Tradition is still important for every day life in Sifnos. Christmas, Carnival, Easter, 1st May, 15th August are parts of the year when people follow old traditions in celebrating, eating, socializing. There are customs about weddings, name - days, making wine and tsipouro, looking for something, building a house, for anything you can think of! There are also many habits about food. On Sundays we eat chickpea soup, on 25th March we eat fish, at Easter we eat "mastelo"(lamb) and many more.
One of the most characteristic traditional events of Sifnos is "panigiri". The evening before the name-day of a church (Saint John, Saint George, etc) people go there (usually in churches far away from villages), first they attend the service and then they eat in a long table, chickpea soup and lamb with spaghetti in tomato sauce cooked there in "open - fire" facilities. There is wine and local musicians and the table is laid again and again until everybody has eaten! People dance and sing and have fun until early the next morning! And everything is for free! You don’t have to pay anything. Every year there is a person or a family or a group of friends who are responsible for the celebration and they have to pay for everything. The food, the cook, the wine, the priest, the musicians, the whitening of the church and the cleaning, everything. In exchange, he keeps the icon of the church at home for a year. Next year another person or group takes the icon and organizes the celebration. This habit is so popular that there are churches with a…"waiting list" for years! There are "panigiri" in Sifnos all year long but the best are "off season", late autumn, winter and early spring.
