Clean Monday

What it is

Great Lent opens on this day in the Eastern Christian year. It comes on the Monday that falls six weeks before Palm Sunday, the Sunday that starts Holy Week, and so it is always 48 days before Easter itself. Because Easter moves, so does Clean Monday, which makes it a moveable feast rather than a fixed date. Different churches know it by different names. Greek speakers call it Kathara Deftera, which means clean or pure Monday. English sources also use Pure Monday, Green Monday and Monday of Lent. In the West the day is often called Ash Monday, though that name fits loosely, since only some Eastern Catholic churches, among them the Maronite, Chaldean and Syro-Malabar, mark people with ashes.

How the fast begins

Lent does not begin on Monday morning. It starts the night before, at a service called Forgiveness Vespers, which ends with the Ceremony of Mutual Forgiveness. Everyone present bows to everyone else and asks to be forgiven. The point is to enter the fast with nothing held against another person. The whole first week is known as Clean Week. Many people go to confession during those days and clean their homes from top to bottom. The Old Testament reading set for the day is from Isaiah, and it calls on the hearer to wash, to stop doing evil, and to learn to do good.

Food and fasting

From this day Orthodox Christians give up meat, eggs and dairy for the whole of Lent. On Clean Monday itself the fast is at its strictest, and those who are able take no food at all until the Divine Liturgy on Wednesday, so that communion is their first nourishment of the season. Fish is allowed only on the great feast days. Shellfish is permitted in the European churches, and cooks have turned that permission into dishes built on shellfish, molluscs and fish roe. In Greece and Cyprus the day is a holiday from work, and families eat those fasting dishes outdoors. Lagana, an unleavened bread baked only for this day, belongs to the same table.

Kites and spring

Clean Monday is treated as the first day of spring in Orthodox tradition, and the mood is bright rather than gloomy. The Gospel read on the morning before tells people not to look sad when they fast, and not to pull a long face. A hymn says that spring has arrived for the fast and that repentance is opening like a flower. The Russian writer Ivan Bunin used the day and its springtime feeling in a story called Pure Monday. In Greece the holiday is famous for kites. Families go out to open ground and fly them, and the custom is read as a wish to reach toward the divine.

How the date is set

Clean Monday belongs to the paschal cycle, the ring of feasts and fasts that hangs on the date of Easter. That date is worked out with the paschal computus, and not every church computes it the same way. Which calendar a church follows matters too. Eastern Orthodox churches use the revised Julian calendar, Eastern Catholics use the Gregorian, and some Oriental Orthodox churches keep the Ethiopian or Coptic calendars. When Easter falls on the same day in the different reckonings, Clean Monday lands two days before Ash Wednesday, which Western Christians call Shrove Monday. When the dates do not agree, the two Mondays fall in separate weeks.

How Clean Monday is kept

It begins the evening before with Forgiveness Vespers, when those present bow to each other and ask forgiveness. Monday is then the first full day of the fast. During the week that follows, called Clean Week, many go to confession and clean their homes thoroughly. In Greece and Cyprus the day is a holiday, and people spend it outdoors with fasting food and kites. Those keeping the strictest fast eat nothing until the Divine Liturgy on Wednesday.

When and where

Clean Monday is a moveable feast with no fixed date. It falls on the Monday that opens Great Lent, 48 days before Easter, and six weeks before Palm Sunday, which begins Holy Week. The date shifts each year with the paschal computus, and churches that follow different calendars do not always keep it in the same week.

It is kept wherever Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches are found, and by Oriental Orthodox Christians too. Greece and Cyprus both treat it as an official day off work, and it is there that the outdoor customs, the shellfish meals and the kites, are seen most. Some Oriental Orthodox churches reckon the date by the Ethiopian or Coptic calendars, so for them Lent opens on a different day.

What Clean Monday means

The day carries two ideas at once. One is cleansing: the name points to a body, a house and a conscience made clean before a long season of restraint. The other is spring. Orthodox tradition treats this Monday as the opening of the season, and the reading and hymns chosen for it carry that note. Fasting is not meant to look grim. The Gospel set for the morning before says plainly that people should not make their faces sad to show they are fasting. Kites turn the same idea outward, a small thing rising toward heaven.

Days Clean Monday is marked

Clean Monday dates: 2026, 2027, 2028

Questions people ask about Clean Monday

See also

Kol NidreAn Aramaic declaration of vow annulment that opens the Yom Kippur evening service in Jewish synagogues.Fat ThursdayA Thursday before Lent when doughnuts, grilled meat and Carnival take overAnthesteriaAn ancient Greek three-day spring festival of Dionysus, new wine, and the deadMagiritsaA Greek lamb offal soup eaten after the midnight Easter service to break the fast

Good reading and sources

• Clean Monday on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-05.