2024-04-02 01:23:08
Today, people most associate the Easter holidays with Monday, while the days preceding it are more important. “Pomlázko was once only touched, moreover, women also rejuvenated men. Foreigners find our traditions harsh, but they only see a small section among many other customs,” ethnologist Jana Poláková from the Ethnographic Institute of the Moravian Regional Museum dispels myths about Easter.
In addition to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, Easter is associated with the welcome of spring, but both are only sparingly related. So what is celebrated anyway?
We can look at Easter from both points of view. The religious point of view considers the individual days of the Easter week to be important, especially Good Friday and Easter. But if we add the colloquial point of view – folk culture -, we also have the welcome of spring and the rituals associated with it.
So is Easter more Christian or Pagan?
Although Easter is the oldest Christian holiday known since the apostolic period, we must also take into account the period of the 9th century, when Christianity was just coming to us. At that time the whole society was pagan. The customs of Christians and pagans worked side by side for a long time, influencing and connecting each other.
So welcoming spring goes back even earlier.
Certainly, but the welcoming of spring, the connection with the cycle of nature and the concept of human existence as such is common to basically all religions. After all, even the Resurrection of Jesus Christ symbolizes a new life cycle. For us ethnologists, it is important to observe both the historical and the modern point of view. Today’s Czech society is atheistic, I would say that most Czechs have Easter connected with religion even less than, for example, Christmas.
The pom pom got twisted
How did Easter traditions and customs change under the previous regime, which suppressed the Catholic Church? Did he manage to suppress or even eradicate something?
I think they didn’t tend to directly falsify in the “inquisitorial” sense. However, religious expressions were rather muted, which is why most people today understand Easter Monday as the most important day. But like I said, it’s not. In short, it was about getting rid of religious tendencies, and therefore everything was transferred to Monday.
Do you notice if the meaning of Easter traditions is shifting in modern history?
If we leave aside the religious direction, I would say that they are consistent. Easter has always been understood as a time when you have to encourage both man and nature to wake up. Easter Monday was supposed to help with that.
So from there we have a blast!
Yes, pom pom is from the word to rejuvenate. The whole act was about plucking any fresh rods, not just willow, and transferring their power of rebirth to the person you touched with them. It was simply the idea that you transfer the force that a tree puts into a rod to grow to a person.
The pom pomázka is now directed by men towards women, but in the past it was mutual, women rejuvenating men.
We are not talking about beating, but really only about touching those parts of the human body that you need most to work – i.e. legs, hands or back, so that you can move, that is, work. In addition, pomlažka was often performed by children and young people towards the elderly, because it was the old people who needed health restoration the most.
And this is where I see a big shift, as this act has unfortunately moved into the realm of “damn every blow that misses.” The pom pomázka is now directed by men towards women, but in the past it was mutual, women rejuvenating men.
“Foreigners consider our Easter sadistic. Explaining the broader context of the holidays can help,” thinks ethnologist Jana Poláková. | Photo: Archive of Jana Poláková
So it’s true what they say about the leap year when girls can carol too?
I’ve never actually heard that. Girls did not go caroling on Easter Monday. But both men and women went through rejuvenation. Men somewhere on Good Friday, somewhere on Tuesday. On Monday, the men went around the women and received a reward for symbolic rejuvenation. It was important that everyone was healthy. Through the rods, everything bad after winter was pulled out and the good that spring brings. Because of this, the rods were subsequently burned, thrown away or thrown on the roof, so that they would not be in the way and could not be seen.
When did the carol degenerate into a beat?
I have no idea. Back in the 1980s, I experienced a pom in the Highlands, when people walked with juniper sticks, which did sting, but no one swung me enough to leave visible marks. I know that the youngest generation already walks there with willow pom poms and probably has no idea about this original custom. It was probably transferred to different places and changed at different times.
Banish the filth, cleanse the soul
I learned that girls who once had no one come to carol felt ashamed. What is the truth?
The superstition that disease or vermin was shaken out of them certainly had a psychological effect. I can imagine that if no one came to see the girl, it might have been uncomfortable or even sad for her. Moreover, Easter Monday was a day when boys and girls could communicate their feelings subliminally and non-verbally. The moment a lot of boys came after the girl, it indicated a good party. Otherwise, it could lower her prestige in society or among her peers.
And this rejuvenation is only a purely Czech and Slovak matter?
It’s a Central European thing. It is difficult to determine borders, because state borders are not at all related to cultural ones. It is clearly known to other nations as well, but in the Central European area it is most concentrated here. In Slovakia and the Moravian-Slovak border, Easter Monday is not so much associated with greenery as with water.
Because it cleanses?
Yes, water is a cleansing element. During the solstices and diurnal equinoxes, you wash yourself with running water to cleanse your body and soul. That is why people often bathed in the stream on Maundy Thursday or Good Friday. The water took away everything bad.
Do we adopt some traditions from surrounding cultures, or some cultural traditions from us?
Other nations living in our country adopt Easter traditions sporadically. For example, I used to hang out with Poles who immigrated to the Czech Republic, and they thought the pomázka was a dishonor of a religious holiday. In some parts of Poland they don’t know it at all, nor do they do it in the same way as we do.
From an ethnologist’s point of view, it is somewhat unfortunate when the traditions of another culture are adopted.
Are we adopting any traditions?
But we are starting to take over from other nations, for example Easter bunnies or egg hunts. It’s nice fun for children, but unfortunately from an ethnologist’s point of view, it’s rather unfortunate when the traditions of another culture – in this case German and Austrian – are taken over and presented as our long-standing customs. For example, Germans from Brno used to search for eggs in the Czech Republic. Witnesses who lived in Brno before the war remembered it a lot, but on the contrary, the Germans did not use pomlazka here.
Now that you mention it, is Easter more for little kids?
At the moment, they are widely understood as a children’s tradition. Above all, in the cities, a lot of thematic activities are connected with them in kindergartens, schools and the like. In the Moravian countryside it is more a matter for teenagers or adults. He goes in groups not only to his relatives, but also to his female dancers, with whom he also goes to feasts, for example. But it’s not like that everywhere, it’s an intergenerational and variable habit.
“Resurrection” of the Vsetin custom
I was originally going to ask if we have relatively harsh Easter traditions compared to other cultures, but then I remembered, for example, the customs they have in the Philippines.
That’s right, they get nailed to the cross there. They express the highest degree of self-sacrifice. And that may seem drastic to us. Whenever we explain our traditions to foreigners, they can be unpleasantly surprised, because they perceive only the last layer they see, and the pom pom often seems sadistic to them. At the same time, they miss the spiritual basis. To say that someone’s habits are worse or better, more drastic or nicer is quite misleading.
Can the tradition be introduced to people from abroad?
If you explain the wider context of what we are talking about now, I think foreigners will understand. Explaining why this particular holiday works can help people not see Easter Monday as the main day and physical punishment as the main reason for the existence of the holiday.
What is your favorite Easter tradition?
As an ethnologist, I am extremely pleased with a particular custom in the Vsetín region, where on Easter Sunday people organize a night walk during which they carol. At the same time, my predecessors in the field described this tradition as non-existent.
How is it possible?
It was more of a coincidence than a design. One ethnographer stated in his monograph that “as recently as ten years ago this custom was working.” Maybe he didn’t even mean it didn’t work anymore, but he worded it that way. Others took this wording from him and basically wrote that “in the 1940s this custom worked, but now it doesn’t.” Therefore, no experts were interested in this tradition for a long time and had no reason to go and map it. I participated in it myself and honestly, going to map the midnight patrol is definitely not an easy matter.