Annual Ass-Whipping for Fun and Fabulous Prizes...
In
the Western time-honored Easter tradition, children flock to the green
gardens of suburbia in search of colored Easter eggs. Meanwhile, in
Czechia, boys gather willow branches, weave them into switches, and
chase women through the streets until they catch them and whip their butts reeeeeaaaallll gooooood. And the women give them colored
Easter eggs and candy for the effort.
“It's a pagan fertility ritual!” squealed my hippy-dippy California friend when he visited me in Prague in 1998. There was some truth in his wild guess. Most pagan seasonal rituals were eclipsed by the Mighty Church in an effort to quash them by substituting religious celebrations in their place. Both Christmas and Easter coincide with the pagan celestial celebrations of the winter solstice and the spring equinox. And that is not a coincidence.
More Easter Than Most Countries
In
the West, we get a couple of days off to celebrate Good Friday and
Easter Sunday. But in the grand old tradition of taking it easy and
enjoying life, select Europeans get extra Easter holidays. They've
got Ugly Wednesday, Green Thursday, Good Friday, White Saturday,
Easter Sunday, and Easter Monday. All they need is Fat Tuesday and a
bit of jazz and it could be Mardi Gras.
My
wife and I took advantage of the long weekend to leave Prague and
spend time pursuing one of my favorite pastimes: eating fried cheese
and drinking beer in castle pubs. For all of these events to
come to pass, all planets in the cosmos must align properly. And in
the sleepy medieval town of Loket, all portents pointed to pleasure
and I got my wish.
What Is the Meaning of This?
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| Be good and beat some butts! |
The
boys and men take great care in selecting willow branches with just
the right bend and just the right 'spring' in the wood. They must be
supple enough to be twisted and woven into braided whips capable of
beating eggs out of the most resilient of booties. The ends of the
whip are decorated with colorful ribbons, and the finished Easter
Excalibur is called pomlázka. If the boys are all thumbs
or too lazy to climb a tree, they can always buy them pre-assembled by
senior citizens trying to make a buck.
Next
they take to the streets in search of butts to beat. When they find a
girl, they chant “Hody, hody doprovody, dejte vejce malovaný,
nedáte-li malovaný, dejte aspoň bílý, slepička vám snese
jiný…” which means 'Give me
all your eggs and I'll return the favor by beating your bum with
this here switch o' mine. Oh, and those eggs better be colored as
well.' This is not assault, nossiree Bob. Recipients of the ritual
beatings bear not only light red welts on their buttockal regions,
they will also receive blessings of health and fertility.
Traditionally, girls who did not get threatened at whip-point for
their precious eggs felt neglected, undesirable, and were forced to
join a convent. Holidays are harsh.
A Village Easter Monday Bristling With Whips and Wicker Baskets
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| Hold your whip higher, son. |
We
stomped around Castle Loket on Easter Sunday, I ate my smaženy sýr and drank my castle beer, and I got some wicked castle shots for the
old photo archive. Easter Monday we checked out of the B&B and
embarked on a casual walkabout of the old village for a few hours
before heading over to Karlovy Vary, then homeward.
The
first punters presented themselves. Three Czech boys in their late
teens swung their pomlázky like
gunslingers at high noon. They sniffed, snorted, grunted, giggled,
swigged their beers, and checked their smartphones. Hell, they're
teens after all. Maybe they had a booty map app.
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| Young Whippersnappers |
As
we winded on down the road toward the village bus stop, we saw
several boys ranging in age from 8 to 18, all armed to the teeth with
whips and grins. Most of them carried wicker baskets full of colorful
eggs plundered from village booties. But not a girl in sight
anywhere. Were they hiding in their cottages with pillows on their
sore rumps? Did they all become feminists overnight and start
whipping boys' butts in revenge?
I
didn't stay long enough to stalk the girls and ask them to comment
for my bloggy-woggy. Instead, we switched venues to view another form
of cultural oddity known as Karlovy Vary. It's not just a Czech spa
town, the home of a film festival, and the source of Becherovka. It's
also a weird kind of hybrid of Moscow and Hollywood, where uber-rich
New Russians buy gaudy jewelry from store windows and prance about
like Stalin's stallions.
But
that's a story for another day...
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| photo: Gabriela Sarževská |
When the Wide Body Jetsetter isn't busy eating fried cheese in castles and practicing Easter whip fu, he makes a modest living as a professional photographer and a freelance writer, which seems to explain an awful lot.