Polish Easter Customs
Eastertime has come upon us once again and along with it comes all the traditional customs that we Polonians have observed since the time of our forefathers.
Polish Easter customs are many and often vary from one region to another. In all Poland, however, the first thought of Easter occurs on Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent. On that day young willow twigs are cut and placed in water so that they may sprout “pussies” on Palm or Willow Sunday. During the weeks of long wintry evenings, followed by mild fasting and absence of merry-making, many are the semipagan, semi-religious Easter legends, tales and stories told by the old folks to the family gathered round a stove or crackling fire.
At long last, it is Palm Sunday. The faithful take their “palms” to be blessed and Holy Week has begun. The blessed pussy willows are regarded as a symbol of happiness, prosperity and health. They have always been so regarded. The 16th century poet, Mikolaj Rey, declared that “who does not swallow a ‘pussy’ on Palm Sunday, will not achieve salvation.” In some localities it is customary to visit neighbors and playfully strike them with unblessed willow twigs, saying….
“The willow strikes you–I do not.
In a week–the great week.
In six days–Easter Day.”
The week between Palm Sunday and Easter is a busy one indeed. It is a time of spring house-cleaning, church-going, fasting and general preparations for Wielkanoc, or the Great Night, as Easter is called in Polish.
In all Polish churches, a replica of the Body of Christ is laid in the sepulchre and covered with flowers on Maundy Thursday. People come to worship at His Tomb. They are not summoned by church bells for these remain silent until the day of Resurrection.
Not so long ago in some sections of Poland boys dressed as soldiers would drape black cloth around a straw effigy of Judas and carry it to church. After the service they would go to the cemetery, where amid shouts and laughter they beat Judas with sticks and wooden swords. They then placed the effigy in a wheelbarrel, took it to the parish house and the manor, raining blows upon Judas all the way. Finally, the villian was drowned in a river or burned at the stake.
Although Poles eat nothing except baked potatoes and unbuttered bread from Good Friday to Easter Sunday, there is plenty of baking and cooking going on. For the Swiecone or hallow-fare must be ready by Saturday to take to church for blessing or be laid out on a large table covered with snow white linen to await the visit of the priest. Tradition decrees that the hallow-fare must include certain symbolic foods. In the center stands the Agnus Dei, or Lamb of God, fashioned from butter or sugar. Poland’s red and white flag waving at its side. Arranged around it and decorated with colored paper cut-outs and festoons of green are elaborate Easter pastry, cheese, coils of sausage, hams, suckling pigs and piles of painted hard-boiled eggs.
The Easter feast is as sumptuous as the family purse permits, for Poles will go to great lengths to prepare the right kinds of hallow-fare. Their imaginations are stirred by the descriptions of Easter feasts in old Poland that read like a page out of the “Arabian Nights.”
No Polish Easter would be complete without the gaily decorated Easter Eggs. The egg, symbol of life in embryo, was a favorite offering in pagan days to the souls of the departed and to the forces of nature. Christianity gave the egg new meaning — a symbol of faith in the hereafter and of the resurrection of the body. Popular legend has devised countless explanations for the origin of colored eggs…. One version has it that an angel appeared to Mary Magdalen at Christ’s grave and told her she need no longer weep as Christ has risen from the dead. Overjoyed, she ran home and found the eggs in her room had turned lovely colors. Whereupon, she went into the street and presented them to the Apostles, in whose hands the eggs became birds.
During the days proceeding Holy Saturday, Polish peasants vied with one another in the artistic decoration of hard-boiled eggs. As there were so many different techniques and so many natural born artists, rarely were any two eggs exactly alike. Some were merely dyed in solid color — malowanki, kraszanski, or byczki. Others after being colored had outlines of birds, flowers and animals scratched on their surface — skrobanki or rysowanki. Still others were betiked, etched in artistic design and then dipped in coloring fluids — pisanki. Easter eggs are shared with friends and best wishes are exchanged, much as the unleavened wafer is shared at Christmas time.
Easter Sunday is not a day of visiting. The entire family partakes of the hallow-fare upon its return from the joyous Resurrection Service and remains at home!
“HAPPY EASTER TO ALL!!”
….SEE YOU SOON, GOD BE WILLING….
