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Easter according to the Czechs

I remember when some years ago, in a language school in London we exchanged Easter tradition experiences. As the only Czech I was there definitely the most controversial among international students community in our class with explanation of Czech “pomlazka” custom. It is the tradition that on Easter Monday men beat women with a specific cane made from willow branches to women be fresh in the next year according to our tradition. And women are happy and they give back to the man Easter eggs, sweets, drinks etc. So that we beat women even perhaps symbolically, was for half of foreigners very curious and strange and the other were shocked and considered it as barbarian. A smart beautiful British woman teacher lost little bit of my platonic love when she tried to condemn this custom and argued against it from strong feminist positions.

The similar experience has recently my wife on international community exchange between our suburb town and a partner town in France where she presented our Easter customs. Half of French accepted with surprise the extraordinary curiosity, even some smaller kids begin to run after their girls with the pomlazka, the second part of the French would most like to fight immediately against this injustice in the one of the country of the European Community and Schengen space.

Why am I writing about it now? I could not differently, when I was looking this morning at my daughter, she was unhappy, that nobody with pomlazka had been comming. And how she was looking forward some boys at our fence, because she had prepared entire Saturday and Sunday before the traditional colored eggs for them.

Well please here you are a couple of illustrative photos from this morning, how was it with the Czech barbarian tradition: