Though the name suggests a bit of violence, this Czech tradition is actually quite good natured. Braided whips or wooden spoons known as pomlázka are used to lightly hit loved ones. It’s thought the practice brings good luck for the hitter and a bit of youth for the hittee. Or at least health and happiness for the upcoming year. Depends on who you ask.
Since April in Poland is usually still pretty frigid, the tradition of Smingus-Dyngus makes perfect sense. Not. On Easter Monday, Polish boys try to soak one another and unsuspecting passersby with buckets of water. It’s thought that any girl who gets drenched will marry within the year — a legend with origins in a baptism story. More likely it’s seen by the boys as a good excuse for a village-wide water fight.
On the Tuesday following Easter Sunday, the newly elected police constable in Hungerford (a small village in Berkshire, England), blows his horn to assemble all the men of the town. Two are elected to carry the tutti, a tall pole with an orange and some spring flowers on top, and pass out oranges to the women on the street in return for kisses.
Though it doesn’t necessarily break world records, if you happen by the small town of Haux, France, on Easter Monday, you’ll witness an enormous omelette being served up in the town square. Big enough to feed more than 1,000 people, this omelet is made with 4,500 eggs in memory of the eggs Napoleon and his army ate when traveling through Haux long ago.
In Verges, Spain, you’ll find a celebration like no other on Holy Thursday each year. The dansa de la mort, or death dance, is performed in the town center. Participants dress in skeleton costumes and parade through the streets. The dance begins at midnight and lasts three hours, meaning the skeletons holding boxes of ashes at the end are pretty spooky by the time 3 a.m. rolls around.
You may wake up to a bit of mayhem on Holy Saturday if you happen to be on the Greek island of Corfu, given that it’s the time of the traditional annual pot throwing. People throw pots, pans, and other kitchenware out of their windows, smashing them on the street below to symbolize the coming of spring and the new crops that will be gathered in new pots (given that they’ve smashed all the old ones. It would seem that some new earthenware would be in order).
Eggs are normally meant for eating, hunting, and painting, but they find new purpose in Latvia. Children (and young-at-heart adults) pair off and carefully select colored hard-boiled eggs joined with string. The eggs are banged together until one breaks. The winner is the player with the stronger egg, and can walk around the rest of Easter with his or her head held high.
Rather than honoring the traditional Easter bunny, Australians take the holiday as a time to recognize the endangered bilby — a desert-dwelling marsupial pictured above. The Easter Bilby brings chocolate and eggs to the children. Not only is it a good moment to sneak in some species saving, but it’s also a snub to rabbits, which have become an enormous pest in Australia, destroying crops across the country.
In South American countries, Brazil in particular, some communities build a life-sized Judas effigy out of whatever material is handy – straw, cloth, paper, or the like. The effigy is paraded around town, hit with sticks and eventually burned outside a church or cemetery. Some towns such as in Itu, Brazil, take it up a notch and blow up the effigy with dynamite. Take that, Judas.
Why celebrate Halloween once when you could celebrate it twice? That’s the idea in Sweden. Kids take Easter an another opportunity to dress up and go door-to-door collecting candy in exchange for pussy willows. Pretty good deal, if you ask me.
