Easter traditions from around the world
This week we’re going to lay off the serious translationy stuff, and tell you a bit more about Easter traditions from around the world.
How do Czechs celebrate Easter?
Let’s start close to home and talk about Czech Easter. As you may have seen from our post on Facebook, it involves whips, shots, and lots of pretty coloured eggs.
On Easter Sunday girls traditionally spend the day painting coloured eggs (kraslice) which they give to boys on Easter Monday. On Easter Monday men go around spanking women to keep them beautiful and healthy. They use special whips called Pomlazka, which are made from braided pussywillow twigs with coloured ribbons on the end. Traditionally men made their own pomlazky, but now most people buy them or use wooden spoons.
We also eat mazanec, a bread made with rum-soaked rasins, during Easter week and bake sheep shaped cakes.
Easter in the Netherlands
In the Netherlands, people decorate Paastakken (Easter branches). Just like a Christmas tree, they decorate them with cookies and tiny wooden chickens and other Easter related things.
Easter in Ireland
On Good Friday, you’re not meant to drink or eat meat in Ireland. Shops aren’t actually allowed to sell alcohol on Good Friday, so everyone normally stocks up the day before and has a big house party where they drink and eat meat, just out of spite against the church and government for telling them what to do..
On Easter Sunday children get given Easter eggs after mass, which normally turns into a competition to see who got the most eggs.
English Easter
The most famous thing about Easter in England has to be the Easter bunny. The Easter bunny brings eggs for children to eat, and many places hold Easter egg hunts.
Easter in Poland
In Poland, they celebrate what’s known as lany poniedzialek (Wet Monday). Boys throw water over girls and spank them with pussywillow whips. Girls then get their own back and do the same to the boys on Tuesday.
This tradition is also held in the Ukraine (Поливаний понеділок), Czech Republic (oblevacka) and Slovakia (oblievacka).
So, as you can see, there’ll always be something interesting to get up to.
After all, there’s nothing better than learning about different cultures.
