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This festival of the chestnut harvest is most fervently celebrated in the village of Elos in southwest Crete. Music, dancing, eating and drinking all play their part.

This is the most important celebration of the Greek year. It is predominantly a family affair, focusing on the home, where spit-roasted goat is the highlight of a day of eating and drinking. More formal, religious processions are led by fabulously attired priests or monks and are often followed by fireworks. At Agios Nikolaos, Easter culminates with the burning of an effigy of Judas Iscariot.

In the Greek calendar, Epiphany ends the 12-day reign of mischievous spirits who run loose during Christmas. Ceremonial rites banish the spirits until the next year, and baptismal fonts, springs and wells are blessed by local priests or monks. In some places such as Chora Sfakion, young men dive for a crucifix tossed into the harbour by a priest.

The biggest celebration to mark the day of Crete’s patron saint is at Irakleio, where icons and relics are carried through the streets with great pomp. The saint’s day is also celebrated at churches across the island.

Many processions and celebrations abound at Agios Nikolaos to celebrate the town’s patron saint, who is also venerated all over the island.

The Festival of the Virgin Mary (Apokimisis tis Panayias ) is second only to Easter and tends to be a much more public celebration. Church processions are followed by open-air eating and drinking in the churchyard or village square, in turn followed by music and dancing until the early hours.

A national festival commemorating the beginning of Greece’s final struggle for independence in 1821. It is combined with the celebration of the Feast of the Annunciation, and so religious processions are followed by military parades in major towns, along with music and dancing all the way.

Many mountain-top chapels for this prophet may originally have been for the sun-god Helios.

At the Church of Asi Gonia Apokoronou near Rethymno, hundreds of Cretan shepherds bring their sheep to be blessed on St George’s Day each year, hoping to ensure healthy flocks and a prosperous year. In return, the shepherds distribute free sheep’s milk.

Siteia’s sultana festival is a relaxed celebration of the grape harvest, with music, dancing, lashings of local wine and nightly performances in the old Venetian fortress, now restored as an open air theatre.