PRAGUE EASTER MARKETS
Whips and Easter Eggs
Once banned during the communist
era, Prague Easter Markets are making a big comeback. The popular springtime
festivals are centuries old rituals
closely tied to religious festivities. The Easter markets in Prague take
place at the Old Town Square and Wenceslas Square, very popular affairs
with Easter craft displays comprising over 100 stalls of merchants of
Bohemian crafts, including wooden toys, crystal glasses, candles, jewellery,
metal
craft, intricate embroidery, puppets and dolls in regional costume dresses,
and especially Easter eggs, hand-painted and decorated in bright colors
are a well known feature. An Easter Egg contest is held every year in
Prague for the best decorated eggs.
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The traditionally costumed local women vendors will personalize the
Easter eggs with your name or a special message. And in between your
shopping indulges in the barbecued sausages and Czech Pilsner beer (the
Pilsner beer was essentially inverted here is named for the town of Pilson
between Prague and the German border) and spit roasted pork.
Traditional Easter Customs in the Czech Republic are perhaps rather unique
and indeed though provoking where the relations between men and women
seem to play out in peculiar customs where young boys seem to be the
terrorists of the Easter holidays.
"Ugly Wednesday" is the last day of school before the holiday when on "Green Thursday", boys take up their wooden rattles, "rehtacka" march through the town, shaking the rattles to scare off Judas who is the particular villain of the Christ story. This ritual is repeated on "Good Friday" and again on "White Saturday" when the young tricksters in a Halloween reversal stop at every house and shake their rattles until the inhabitants hand over money!
Easter Sunday
On Easter Sunday, it’s the girls turn, painting Easter Eggs "kraslice" the younger girls learning their mothers the use of watercolor paints, picture stickers, bee's wax, straw or feathers to decorate the eggs in a style copied by Faberge for his fabulous versions except in gold and jewels.
While the girls paint their
Easter eggs, the boys get ready for their next Easter terror tactic,
making whips.
The Easter whips "pomlázka" are
made from braided twigs. On the Monday after Easter, the boys and men
travel again through the village where the boys use the whips on
girls, stopping at every house to recite Easter poems while whipping
the legs of every girl or woman in the house and often customary to throw
a girl into a cold water bath to chase away bad spirits. Called the “Easter
Dousing” this seems to be a custom designed to prevent little angels
from becoming witches. Afterward the girl ties a ribbon around the boy’s
whip and gives him an egg. The boy with the most ribbons wins. The older
men if too unseemly to be getting a girl’s egg and a ribbon around
his whip get a shot of liquor instead. One can make assumptions of the
symbolic meaning of girls handing over their eggs to boys after being
whipped and dunked, and in more modern times perhaps the alcohol comes
first before a woman gets whipped, and often followed by a police report,
but at Easter in Prague it remains a quant custom of times past.
Whips can be purchased at the Easter Market booths should tourist boys wish to whip their wife, girlfriend or traveling companion, but this adventure seems a perilous test of a relationship, except perhaps back at the hotel with the lights low. © Bargain Travel Europe
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See Also:
TOUR PRAGUE BY SEGWAY
INTREPID
FAMILY TRAVEL TOURS
GERMANY'S
BLACK FOREST
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