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New Years Eve - Epiphany in Hydra
At New Year's Eve the doors of the houses stay opened for the welcoming of the visitors. The house owner hangs a ribbon to the quest's neck and invites him for supper.
Sanctification in Hydra island, at the old days, took place on the eve of Epiphany, in order to expel the goblins. All housewives of Hydra, at the eve of Epiphany, went to the Church and after the end of the Liturgy, with pitcher transported the holy water on their homes, and then sanctified every corner of their home, as the cisterns and their wells.
The rest of the holy water were stored in the icon for the rest of the year. Also on Epiphany Eve all the priests of the parishes of Hydra hallow homes, shops and boats of parishioners.
The day of the Epiphany, after the end of the sequence of the Great Sanctification was formed great procession with hymns and prayers, which was directed through the old neighborhoods of Hydra - Kiafas-Gkourmadas - until the Square Kalon Pigadionn, where the priests of the island had the blessing of the two wells.
Near the noon, the procession reached the northern breakwater of the harbor through the main street of Andrea Maiouli, so the Cross tied with ribbon, fell to the sea from the hands of the bishop, to sanctify the waters. Despot chanting "En Jordan ..." and threw the cross into the sea, freeing from his hands three pigeons.
Then they all returned back at the Church to pray for a good year and for their health. The children, who fell to the sea to catch the Cross, they took it and went with it around the shops. The consecration of the waters was also being done by the parishioners of the Church of St. John the Baptist in the harbor of Kamini Kamini since 1963.
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