I’m quietly obsessed with holidays that involve light whipping.
Polish communities celebrate Śmigus-dyngus on Easter Monday, or Dyngus Day. It’s a high-spirited post-Lenten celebration that merges a few old traditions into one.
Pussy willows were used as an alternative to palm leaves on Palm Sunday in Poland, since there aren’t many palm leaves to be found in the region. They were blessed by priests and believed to be a little bit magic, bringing good luck. And naturally, with a whippy stick in hand, people started whipping each other. A traditional saying is, “It's not me who strikes, the willow strikes, in a week, holy day, in six nights, Easter!" It became the custom that boys whipped girls on Easter Monday, but girls got their revenge on Tuesday. Easter whippings for women are a tradition in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and parts of Hungary, so it makes sense that this tradition kept going in neighboring Poland.
There’s also the tradition of throwing water on girls. The why of this is a bit murky. Some suggest that it relates to Slavic goddesses of fertility or Corn Mothers (corn husk dolls you water to help the harvest along.) Some have suggested that it relates to the baptism of Mieszko I, but that doesn’t sufficiently explain why girls get the soaking on Easter Monday. (The water-throwing is the Śmigus portion of the program.)
Either way, boys used to sneak into girls’ rooms and toss water on them. In rowdier times, when all the water was gone, some girls might be dragged to be pushed in a pond. Yikes. To avoid a soaking, girls could try to bribe boys with painted eggs (they think the name Dyngus comes from obscure German words for “ransom” or “the eggs that are owed.”) Girls are supposed to wait a day to soak the boys, but in practice, everybody’s throwing water at everybody.
There’s a parade of boys, who are sometimes dressed as bears with bells on their heads. Naturally! There are lots of mini traditions like that – from reciting verses to carrying roosters on decorated wagons.