My big, fat, Greek Easter: food and spectacle on Crete, Corfu and Tinos

Ditch the chocolate eggs and daffodils – Easter tradition in Greece means firecrackers, processions and flying clay pots

Breathing the incense-scented air and listening to the priest’s plaintive chant, we sat in darkness, lit only by the glimmer of the “eternal flame” – ferried over from Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre earlier that day.

At midnight, the black-clad priest brandished the lantern aloft: “Xristos anesti!” “Christ has risen!” he cried. As if on cue, bells pealed wildly and firecrackers fizzed through the darkened streets of Palekastro in east Crete.