Czech Easter

The willow whip

The pomlázka is braided from four to twenty-four fresh willow rods, is between about half a metre and two metres long, and is finished with coloured ribbons at the end. Willow is chosen because it is the first thing to green; the whipping is understood as passing that freshness on, and being tapped with it is said to bring health, beauty, youth and fertility for the year. Nobody in the country describes it as a punishment.

On Easter Monday morning men and boys go from house to house, tap the women and girls lightly, and recite a rhyme asking for eggs — the best known begins Hody, hody doprovody, dejte vejce malovaný. In return they are given decorated eggs, sweets, and often a small glass of something. In parts of Moravia and Slovakia water is part of it too: men splash the women, and women who are visited after midday may answer with a bucket of cold water. The painted eggs are kraslice, from an old word for beautiful, and the patterns — geometric, floral, sometimes religious — differ from region to region.

The week before

Each day of the week before has its own name and its own habits. Green Thursday is a day for behaving mildly, named for the green food once eaten on it, and now also for green beer. From Good Friday to Saturday the church bells are said to have flown to Rome, and in villages boys go round with wooden rattles in their place. Good Friday and Easter Monday are public holidays.

An argument that is part of the festival

The custom is now discussed in Czechia more than it is explained. It is still widely kept in villages in Bohemia and Moravia and has thinned out in Prague and the other cities. A 2022 survey found that seventy-nine per cent of the women asked disliked the pomlázka, naming pain, bruising and humiliation, and the drinking that goes with it was named as a problem of its own. An atlas entry that left that out would be describing a postcard rather than the festival.