Clean Monday is the first day of Great Lent in the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches, seven weeks before Pascha, and takes its name from the idea of entering the fast with a "clean" body and soul, having left aside rich foods and, in the ideal, old grudges. It follows immediately on Forgiveness Sunday, so that the fast opens with reconciliation. There are no ashes as in the West; the day is instead marked by the sudden shift into the Lenten services and the strictest reaches of the fast.
In Greece the day, Kathara Deftera, is a public holiday with a strong popular character: families go out of doors, fly kites, and eat a distinctive Lenten table of shellfish, olives, taramosalata and the flatbread lagana, foods that keep the fast while still making a feast of the day. The combination is characteristic of the Orthodox approach, in which the beginning of a severe fast is also a communal and even cheerful occasion, and the outdoor kite-flying is often read as an image of the soul rising in prayer.