Feature: Greeks celebrate Ash Monday in cold weather and recession

Celebrating the end of the Carnival season and the start of Lent to Christian Orthodox Easter, Greeks participated in various activities over the past three days in the capital and cities across the country, sending a message of optimism, despite the gloom of the cold weather and the prolonged economic crisis.

In the sixth year of recession, people took a break from the harsh reality with feathered costumes, music and laughter during the weekend before sitting around the table to share traditional dishes on Ash Monday or Clean Monday, exactly 40 days before Easter.

As the heavy rain did not allow Greek children to fly kites outdoors this year, families came together at homes to enjoy the traditional non- meat fasting delicacies in order to leave behind "sinful attitudes" and "clean body and soul" for the Easter.

On Saturday, hordes of the same faithful people dressed up as the walking dead before embarking on a ramble around the city center in a Zombie parade.

Running for the fourth year, the Athens Zombie Walk has gained a lot of fans in Greece. Due to the success of such horror films, in 2000 zombie walks have spread from North America to cities around the globe.

Some of the most harrowing horror movie villains like Freddy Krueger from Nightmare on Elm Street, Darth Vader in Star Wars and Skeletor were brought back from the dead in gruesome makeovers on Syntagma square in front of the parliament and central Athens roads on Saturday.

Getting the most out of the festive season, children and adults on Sunday joined fancy dress parades and cheerful music concerts across Athens and other cities nationwide.

Despite being shadowed by economic difficulties, people dressed in fun, colorful costumes to beat the financial woes.

Diverse celebrations, which date to Antiquity and to the worship of God Dionysus in ancient Greek mythology, were held glamorously all over the country.

More than 30,000 revelers took to the streets of the western Greece city port of Patras celebrating the largest event of its kind in Greece, counting 180 years of history.

In the city of Xanthi in Northern Greece, the three- week carnival festival closed with the burning of the Carnival King's effigy on the banks of the local river.

On Clean Monday, which is a public holiday in Greece, the revelers started returning to the reality of austerity, as they made their last minute shopping for the traditional lunch seeking to get the most value for money for each euro they spent.

After several rounds of salary cuts and tax hikes implemented since 2010 that has shrunk the income of the average household by 30 percent, consumers are deleting items from their shopping list and look for bargains.

According to data from the National Confederation of Greek Commerce (ESEE), the most popular ingredients for the holiday's dishes were by 2.4 percent cheaper on average than last year.

The average family lunch prepared with four kilos of fishes and mollusks, a kilo of olive oils, a kilo of vegetables, one kilo of dessert and a kilo of a special kind of bread, baked only on this day, named "lagana", costed 77.9 euros(86.36 U.S. dollars) to Greeks this year down from 79.8 euros in 2015. However, as Greek people expect a new wave of painful measures after the end of the ongoing negotiations between the government and envoys of Greece's international creditors, many families kept their Clean Monday budget spending to the minimum. Enditem