The Monday after Easter it rained all day long and we said that we were lucky that it waited till Easter was over.
Monday after Easter, in the Polish tradition, is called SMYNGUS DYNGUS DAY and in Poland
As Catholic as Poland
I have always maintained that Easter is nothing more than a celebration of SPRING that was intruded on by the Christian church who just could not see people having fun celebrating nature as they have for thousands of years.
The original tradition, as I have been told, involved young men splashing water (or perfume) on ladies that they especially admired or even wanted to woo. Mother Nature does encourage “love” in the spring as evidenced by the animals and we are nothing if not members of the animal kingdom.
Anyway, as the years grew, the special tradition deteriorated into basically a “wash” where people dump buckets of water on people sleeping in their beds or wait for them to pass by and hose them down…all with fun in mind so you could not get mad even though you had to go home and change into dry clothes or remain in the wet ones since someone on the next block would hose you down again.
Interesting tradition that I am told is practiced in most of the Slavic countries…
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