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Easter Spanking Rituals

Eddie Davidson 🚫

What about this idea, a young teenage boy visits his family who come from Slovakia around Easter time and is introduced to the family rituals?

In the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and some parts of Hungary, the Easter Whip is used as part of a tradition of spanking or whipping on Easter Monday.

In the morning, men spank women with a special handmade whip or switch called pomlázka or karabáč (in Czech) or korbáč (in Slovak) or siba or korbács (in Hungarian). The pomlázka consists of three, four, eight, twelve or even twenty-four withies (willow rods), is usually from half a meter to two meters long and decorated with coloured ribbons at the end.

If men arrive at women's houses after 12 o'clock, women throw a bucket of cold water on them. In some regions the men also spray water or perfume on the girls.

When going house to house, the male first sings a verse relating to eggs and spring themes like bountifulness and fertility, the young woman turns around and the man takes a few whacks at her backside with the whip. The spanking may be painful, but it's not intended to cause suffering.

In the past, young boys would chase young girls on the village streets with the whips, and vintage illustrations of people in traditional dress show girls running or hiding. Playful running around, similar to the game of tag, still occurs. But aggressive ambushing is now considered unacceptable bullying by the modern generation.

A legend says that women should be spanked with a whip in order to keep their health, beauty and fertility throughout the following year.

Replies:   Remus2
Remus2 🚫
Updated:

@Eddie Davidson

My understanding of it is a bit different. The pomlázka aka woven pussywillow twigs, was meant to chase bad health/illness away for a year. Young women and girls would be lightly struck about the legs with one (not enough to hurt), or alternatively, have some water thrown on them for the same effect. An Easter carol would be sung by the boy in the doing. If the girl liked it, she would tie a ribbon on the boys pomlázka and give him a painted egg (kraslice) or candy. This tradition predated Christian influence and thus was considered paganism.

After operation Danube, the Bratislava Declaration lead to widespread condemnation of the so called pagan traditions. Pondělí velikonoční and its associated rituals were effectively banned. That btw, never fully worked.

It was to make a resurgence post 1989. The local Czech populations in the smaller towns brought it back. Towns such as Doksy never really got away from it and carried on with it. Prague was silenced for the most part, and when it came back, it wasn't the same. When practiced there, it was more of an excuse to party and get drunk as the eggs and candy were replaced with shots of brandy etc.

I should caveat all the above with its old information. A lot can change in the ~25 years since I've been there.

That said, the story would be believable with some research and a pagan cult angle.

LupusDei 🚫
Updated:

I can confirm the pussywillow spanking to be part of widespread pre-christian tradition of spring equinox rituals. The version surviving in Latvian culture has no direct sexual connotation whatsoever and is centered on the very willow-catkins, the flowers, the round, white to silver hair covered puffs. The tree itself is named after them and that specific willow varieties are distinguished from more ordinary willow bushes.

So what would be used for the highly symbolic spanking the first thing in Easter morning would be a short bucket of willow branches as full with the catkins as possible, and is mostly administered by parents to children although all sorts of combinations are possible. It's strictly symbolic and while often would be loosely aimed at upper leg or bottom just a light pat on the forearm is deemed equally acceptable. What matters is worlds being said doing that: "Illness out, health in; [healthy/whole/complete/full]* as a willow-catkin!"

*There's single word "vesals" meaning any and all of those things in various contexts.

Then, if one is determined to dig the sexually charged undertones there's woven throughout a lot of "pagan" traditions, one could try and dissect the Latvian word used for willow-catkins 'pūpols' as [masculine:fluffy/woolly-egg] with all the naturally following associations... (oh, I probably should hint for clarity that men "balls" are routinely called just "eggs" in Latvian, when context allows).

Replies:   Remus2
Remus2 🚫

@LupusDei

LupusDei,

For my own edification, how much of that tradition survives today in Latvia, and in what form?

Replies:   LupusDei
LupusDei 🚫
Updated:

@Remus2

For my own edification, how much of that tradition survives today in Latvia, and in what form?

Generally, I would say not much, but still it's alive and well. Depends on what you're asking.

The exact little ritualistic willow-catkin spanking in practice could range from being enacted by next to nobody to hardly anyone and then on rare occasions, while I believe many if not most nationals would be aware of it in principle and could list it if asked about traditional stuff to be done that day for long enough, if not for anything else, then national traditions being part of national literature curriculum in school. But it's not something in the spotlight, or being strongly felt about or enforced by most families, nor being something seen as important or characteristic for that day. All the affair with the colored eggs take much of the spotlight, and the swing comes close second; both much more important and attractive activities all day long. So even in the day's context within tradition, it's a footnote.

For the national tradition as such, the spirit is strong, the knowledge at best spotty, and the practice is minimal and episodic. Still, as the "last pagans of Europe" we feel the self-appointed mission to be keepers of the tradition that once had been huge and widespread in central and east Europe before christianity.

It's not paganism by exact definition either, although that depends on the interpretation. In version I personally subscribe for, word "God" is never used in plural. A pantheon of Nordic or even Greek template can be constructed if one insists, but I personally believe it's rather a late reinterpretation -- as part of the nineteenth century reinvention of the language and mythology in parallel with discovery and documentation and the romanticism trend.

The traditional God-iness or Godkeeping is in principle extremely tolerant unobtrusive and flexible. The belief is that stupidity, not knowing world's principles, only brings self-harming in the first place, so, while you are free to believe whatever nonsense you have come up with it's your responsibility to educate yourself. There exists a movement that tries to build something resembling an organized religion out of it, but it's a small group and outlier rather than mainstream.

The forest is the church. Everything has, well, a soul. Yes, the tree and the river too. A flower left on the sacred stone is the devotion, the "sacrifice" -- of course after you have asked permission to pluck the flower, yes to the flower herself (well, there's two words: one means flower/sacrifice or as a verb "to sacrifice"/"while blooming" and the other is victim/sacrifice; only the first is normally used in context of traditional God-iness, the second mostly speaking about foreign religions. And nothing of that is important.). The body of over two million songs of mathematical beauty is the equivalent of sacred texts. Some simple words have alternative meanings, including sanskrit collisions that may or may not be incidental. Some of that stuff is indeed believed to be that old there was no difference.

Christianity... there's little to no conflict from our side, taking it broadly. Most Latvians nowadays self identify as Christians even if could have been in church for three occasions in their entire lives: baptism, wedding and funeral. In Soviet times much any couple married triple the same day: in government office, church, and traditional midnight ritual at home. And yes, our Lutheran churches have cocks on the spires instead of cross. And by the way, somewhere in that crosssection the Christmas Tree got invented.

But I'm rambling. To conclude, it's officially unofficial, but in practice may easily be more prevalent in everyday life than the unofficially official Christian church for most of people. Although really they exist on different layers, or if Latvian-ism itself is seen as form of religion, we're officially allowed to practice more than one religion at the same time, at least as long one of them is the ethnic identity.

Replies:   Remus2
Remus2 🚫

@LupusDei

Thanks for the reply, it was what I was looking for. I have some Georgian friends who are followers of Uatsdin/Assianism. They are in my age group, growing up under GSSR/USSR. They practiced Georgian Eastern Orthodoxy during the day, and followed Uatsdin in private.
What you described is similar to what they described.

These days, they do it openly, but still get a ration of crap from Soviet era holdovers every now and then.

ystokes 🚫

I always loved the scene in John Wayne's The Quite Man where he is dragging his wife back home with the whole town following and a woman runs up with a switch and says "here is a nice switch to beat your lovely wife with."

Replies:   Dominions Son
Dominions Son 🚫

@ystokes

John Wayne's The Quite Man

That should be The Quiet Man

Replies:   karactr  ystokes
karactr 🚫

@Dominions Son

Dominions Son4/25/2020, 1:35:14 PM

@ystokes
John Wayne's The Quite Man

That should be The Quiet Man

However you spell it, excellent movie. Those 2 in McClintock was almost as good.

Replies:   Dominions Son
Dominions Son 🚫

@karactr

However you spell it, excellent movie.

Truth.

However, while John Wayne was quite the man, the movie was about a soft spoken man.

ystokes 🚫
Updated:

@Dominions Son

@ystokes

John Wayne's The Quite Man

That should be The Quiet Man

This is where spell check doesn't do much good. You can misspell the word you want by correctly spelling the word you don't want. At least I had all the letters correct just not in the right order.

tabbyiz 🚫

Eric Morecam to Andre Previn

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