I just read Dana's memories about Velikonoce. About škaradá středa, zelený čtvrtek, velký patek, bílá sobotá, a neděle a pondělní velenoční. Kraslice, pomlažky a slivovice. Vypadá to jako krásnou dovolenu. Here is a silly easter song that all children here know. Sem poskakuje Petr, ten divoký králik, poskakuje zajíčkovou cestou, skakity, skokity nastává Velikonoce Here comes Peter Cotton tail hopping down the bunny trail hippity, hoppity Easter is on it's way. Představa....Divoký králik nese koš plný kraslice a čokolad.
That's a lovely poem, I must try to learn it thank you I better clean my flat if boys are going to come knocking on my door so they can hit me with things. There is one specific Easter custom, which often seems cruel for foreign visitors when they see it for the first time. In the Czech Republic, on Easter Monday morning boys and men can legally spank Czech girls and women and they are even rewarded for it by the beaten ones! Boys need to make special Easter stick, made of wicker (willow wattle), decorated with ribbons of different colors, such stick is then called “pomlazka” in Czech. According to etymology, “pomlazka” is something which makes the beaten one young, according to the tradition, it should brink them good health and they should stay young. That is why girls reward those who beat them. Mostly they give them painted eggs, but sometimes it also can be chocolate eggs or another sweets, and very often, when the Easter carolers are old enough, they give them some alcohol, the best is if it is home made one. Sometimes girls try to escape the guys, but mostly just not because they would not like to be beaten with “pomlazka”, but because they do not want the guys to get the reward that easily. This custom is, regardless how cruel or strange it may seem to you, still very popular in the Czech Republic (as well in Slovakia). Today, it is not even necessary to make an own “pomlazka” as they sell it almost around every corner before Easter. And this custom is not kept only in the country, but also in towns, Prague including, so on Monday morning, if you watch carefully, you can see carolers in the city. (from Prague dot net , more on it on our lovely wonderful and superior website here: http://www.myczechrepublic.com/czech_cu ... index.html ) The first time my students told me about this I thought they were having me on. It's interesting.. how are you supposed to react when you are hit? Do you smile politely? or... ?
Most of the time, girls just giggle and sometimes they try to make it harder for you to spank their butt, for example by sitting and refusing to get up. Put in words like "beat the girls with a stick" and "cruel though it may seem to you,..", it may give you a wrong picture, it's not supposed to hurt in any way. But of course, it largerly depends on who does it, as your close friends may be more daring when they are given the opportunity to spank you. To give you an example of quite an innocent Easter spanking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L71uAXr4374 Just a few details to add, the reason it's supposed to make you younger (and fertile, too ) is that it's one of the first (maybe the very first, I'm not sure) trees to turn green in the spring and so the life energy from its branches somehow infuses your body during the spanking. Well, this gets sort of pointless when you buy "dead branches" at the store. Another not often mentioned fact is that not always the girls are victims only, somewhere they have their "revenge" (although it's again just a traditional way of making the others more vital), in some regions they spank the guys, in other regions they spill a bucket of water/perfumed-water on the guys, however it's not as widespread tradition as it used to be. And it gets quite rare, my mother used to do this (spilling the water on guys) when she was young, but none of the young girls in the area would do that nowadays.
