LADY SARACOSTI
Written by: Nana Latsi
“Mrs. Lent” which nowadays tends to disappear,
(some teachers who have a taste in schools make it together with the students) was the Queen of fasting forty days.
A custom that you used to encounter all over Greece and according to data from our folklore, Mrs. Lent was used as a calendar that measured the weeks of The Great Lent until Easter.
In most areas it was a paper drawing and in others a doll of pasta.
It depicted a woman with a cross on her head, symbolised by the church, crossed hands because of the forty-day prayer, without a mouth because the mouth was sealed due to fasting and with seven feet.
Each leg symbolized a week and every Saturday they cut one until they reached the Big Saturday.
The latter folded it well and hid it in a dry fig and mixed it with other dried figs.
Whoever found it was considered lucky and brought him luck.
This is the story of Mrs. Lent’s custom.
