Po Slovensky

Slovak Easter (Big Night in Slovakia) is really original. They don’t have dousing and whipping in Ireland at all! But that is Easter Monday (Big Night Monday) already. Although this day attracts the attention of most people, from the Christian point of view it should be Easter Sunday (Big Night Sunday), when Jesus Christ was resurrected. Religious people start going to church from Holy Thursday (Green Thursday) on, because every day until Easter Monday is very important and specific. I remember how relieved I was, as a child, that I didn’t need to go on Monday.

Long before Easter, women start thinking of all the nice dishes they can cook and bake. A few days before the holidays, Easter eggs are painted and later put in baskets on a table or hung on green twigs in a vase. This is good fun especially for parents and kids, the older and childless use the eggs from last years or get ready-made ones from a shop or market. The eggs can be decorated with for this purpose designed colours or with any other colours, wax, stickers or wool glued on them, etc. With the help of bits of paper and feathers lovely chicks can be conjured out of them.

In past, natural materials, like onion skin, were used for painting. On Monday everything is prepared, there are open sandwiches on the table, at least four kinds of cakes, and some bottles of home-made spirits. Women and girls get some coins and also banknotes ready for visitors, chocolate eggs and bunnies for children. The door often doesn’t close until evening; except for family, which sometimes comes from a different town, also neighbours, acquaintances and half-strangers pop in. Most of the time it is a father with sons or men or boys separately. Before boys got painted eggs and refreshment, nowadays it must be money as well and chocolate eggs instead of painted. Seniors are poured spirits, which the hosts gladly drink with them.

The male sex always enjoy this holiday, because they can be mean to females, nobody gives out to them and sometimes they can even make a small fortune out of it. Whether they pour water over girls or whip them depends on which part of Slovakia they are from. I, for example, haven’t been whipped at all. For whipping, special wicker canes are used, mostly made of willow. Dousing can be done traditionally with a bucket of water, those more sensitive use a glass or water pistol, those insensitive push a girl into a bath and shower her. These methods are mostly used by the youth, some girls hate them, others are quite flattered especially if there is a boy whom they like. A gentler way of pouring water involves perfumes, which are sprinkled or even poured on the top of women’s heads.

It comes as no surprise that the hair must be washed by the next day, imagine that only three kinds of odour don’t smell good together let alone several from more visitors! On top of it, cheap perfumes sold for this purpose are used quite often. In past, the Easter traditions were more distinctive, lads and girls were dressed up in national costumes, and boys had to go carolling to deserve a treat. These traditions are still kept in some parts of Slovakia although most of the people just know them from documentaries or evening news.

That’s about it as for Slovak Easter. Boys look forward to it almost since Christmas, girls speculate in advance how they could get away from home.