Easter Monday
About Easter
Easter Monday
Easter Monday is a
Christian holiday
celebrated the next day after
Easter Sunday. Formerly, 'it was also celebrated as a week' , but it
was reduced to a one day celebration in the
19th century. Celebration events include
egg rolling competitions and dousing other people with water which,
at one time, was
holy water used to
bless the
house and food.
Official holiday
Easter Monday is an official holiday in the following countries:
Albania Andorra Anguilla Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Aruba Australia
Austria Bahamas Barbados Belarus (Julian Calendar) Belgium Belize Benin Botswana
British Virgin Islands Bulgaria (Julian Calendar) Burkina Faso Cameroon Canada
(general holiday in Québec, loosely observed elsewhere) Cape Verde Islands
Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile Cook Islands Côte d'Ivoire
Croatia Czech Republic (Pomlázka) Denmark Dominica Equatorial Guinea Faroe
Islands Fiji Finland France French Guiana Gabon Gambia Germany Ghana Gibraltar
Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe Guatemala Guinea Guyana Hong Kong Hungary Iceland
Ireland Isle of Man Italy Jamaica Kenya Kiribati Latvia Lebanon Lesotho
Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Malawi Martinique Moldova (Julian Calendar)
Monaco Montserrat Namibia Nauru Netherlands Netherlands Antilles New Caledonia
New Zealand Niger Nigeria Niue Norway Papua New Guinea Poland Romania (Julian
Calendar) Rwanda Senegal Serbia and Montenegro (Julian Calendar) Seychelles
Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands South Africa (Family Day)[1] Spain Sweden
Switzerland St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon Saint Vincent
and the Grenadines Suriname Swaziland Switzerland Tanzania Trinidad and Tobago
Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda Ukraine United Kingdom(except Scotland)
U.S. Virgin Islands Vanuatu Western Samoa Zambia Zimbabwe
Easter Monday is also celebrated in the one
U.S.
state of
North Carolina.
Traditions
Dyngus Day or Wet Monday (Polish
Śmigus-dyngus, lany poniedziałek or Oblewania) is the name
for Easter Monday in
Poland. In the
Czech Republic it is called Velikonocni Pondeli or Pomlázka,
as the whip-type being used.
Both countries practice a peculiar custom on this day. Traditionally, boys
will awaken girls early in the morning and douse them with water and strike them
about the legs with long thin twigs made from willow, birch or decorated tree
branches (palmy wielkanocne). This practice is possibly connected to a
pre-Christian, pagan fertility rite, that seems in line with the Ancient Roman
Lupercalia, although the earliest documented records of Dyngus Day in Poland are
from 15th century, almost half a millennium after Poland adopted Christianity.
Early in the Polish evolution of the tradition, the Dyngus custom was clearly
differentiated from Śmigus: Dyngus was the exchange of gifts (usually eggs,
often decorated like pisankas),
under the threat of water splashing if one party did not have any eggs ready,
while Śmigus (from Śmigać, to whoosh, ie make a whipping noise) referred
to the striking.
Later the focus shifted to the courting aspect of the ritual, and young
unmarried girls were the only acceptable targets. A boy would sneak into the
bedroom of the particular girl he fancied and awaken her by completely drenching
her with multiple buckets of water. Politics played an important role in
proceedings, and often the boy would get access to the house only by arrangement
with the girl's mother.
Throughout the day girls would find themselves the victims of drenchings and
leg-whippings, and a daughter who wasn't targeted for such activities was
generally considered to be beznadziejna (hopeless) in this very
coupling-oriented environment.
Most recently, the tradition has changed to become entirely water-focused,
and the Śmigus part is almost forgotten. It is quite common for girls to attack
boys just as fiercely as the boys traditionally attacked the girls. With much of
Poland's population residing in tall apartment buildings, high balconies are
favourite hiding places for young people who gleefully empty entire buckets of
water onto randomly selected passers-by.
In the Czech Republic, instead of splashing water, a special handmade
whip called
pomlázka is used on females in the morning. In the afternoon, females douse
males with cold water.
In the United States, Dyngus Day celebrations are widespread and popular in
Buffalo, New York and South Bend, Indiana. In Buffalo's eastern suburbs, Dyngus
Day is celebrated with a level of enthusiasm that rivals
St. Patrick's Day. In South Bend, the day is often used to launch the year's
political campaign - often from within a local pub, where buying drinks is
favored over handshaking.
- For Easter Monday in Hungary,
perfume
or perfumed-water is used. The girls would reward the boys who sprinkle with
coins or
Easter
eggs.
External links
References
- ↑
(1994-12-07).
Public Holidays Act, 1994 (36 of 1994, South Africa). (PDF)
URL accessed on
2006-04-05.
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