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Get Your Willow Switches Ready!

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Thanks to Flickr user foto_daniel for the pic of "Śmigus-Dyngus," well demonstrating the basic principles.

Tomorrow is Easter Monday, a strange sort of half-holiday rarely practiced in the U.S. (except in areas settled by Catholics, particularly Poles--it's apparently still a big deal in Michigan), but if you're in the mood for wackiness, we invite you to try out the Polish tradition of Dyngus Day, or "Śmigus-Dyngus" as our Polish significant other puts it. It's a quite old tradition, first documented around 750 A.D. by some of the first Christian travelers to then-pagan Poland, and although the Poles famously converted to Christianity in 966, the tradition has persisted (in fact, the Catholics have long since tried to re-establish it as a celebration of conversion though, again, it predates it by at least 250 years).

Basically, Śmigus and Dyngus were twin pagan gods: Śmigus, the god of the thunder, and Dyngus the god of water and "wet earth" (i.e., fertility). So, what to do on Dyngus Day? Well, the first and most important thing to do is to spill water all over girls you fancy, most especially as a way of waking them up. You can also whip girls about the ankles with a willow or birch switch, and generally the day devolves into drenching any woman you can find with as much water as you can. Not that it's not already wet enough....

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By Jeremy in on April 12, 2009 6:30 PM

Comments [rss]

  • Yeah, I was a little thin on details on this one. In Poland, it's pretty much a water free for all (I was awoken this morning when K. whipped off my blanket, screamed "Smigus-Dyngus," and doused me with water).



    But anyway, it's a kind of cool tradition, and it's cool how it developed in the Polish diaspora. The above pic, for example, is taken in the US--in Poland, this sort of thing is pretty provincial. In Lodz, where K. was raised, it was very much so just an excuse to cause trouble. Her dad claims that in the late-50s and 60s, when he was a kid, he and his friends would sit on a rook and just dump buckets of water on whatever women walked by (the nicer their clothes, the better). But the entire sneaking into the bedroom of the girl you like to douse her is sort of a country-tradition. It used to be part of the courting process since, of course, the boy who gets in has to be let in by the mother and father.



    As for in the US, according to K., the Poles who settled in the Midwest were primarily from the mountainous areas in the South of Poland (the "Górale"), so their traditions are a little more old-fashioned, with more of (at least a tongue-in-cheek) reference to the fertility part of the tradition. But in the U.S., it's developed into its own thing. Apparently, Dyngus Day in Michigan is a big sort of Polish St. Patrick's Day--the politicians all head down to the pub to buy drinks, etc.

  • Dan

    I was in Poland for one of these and they truly went nuts with the throwing of water.

  • Tom

    I remember doing this as a youngun'. Except that there wasn't the fertility/coupling business attached to it... just an excuse for all the kids, and parents, to drench the hell out of one another. I like it better without all the hyper-traditional crap.

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