"Wesołych Świąt!" Happy Easter! Literally the phrase translates to "merry holiday" and the same expression is used at Christmas to wish people "Merry Christmas." Sometimes you will hear people say "Wesołych Świąt Wielkanocnych," it literally says "Merry Holiday of the Great Night" (referring to Easter), and so it is translated as "Happy Easter," but this usage is more rare and mostly on greeting cards. Easter Sunday is considered the holiest day of the year in Poland.
Tłusty Czwartek (Fat Thursday)
Fat Thursday is the last Thursday before Lent and is associated with Carnival (similar to Fat Tuesday/Mardi Gras, the last Tuesday before Lent). In Poland, Fat Thursday is a day to feast on all sorts of sweets and other foods that are not eaten during Lent. People will meet with friends and family at their homes or at cafes and eat! Pączki (pronounced PAWNCH-key) are one of the most traditional of Fat Thursday sweets. These treats existed as early as the Middle Ages and are deep-fried balls of dough that have been flattened and then filled with jam (stewed plum and rosehip are the most common, but any flavor can be found) and may or may not be covered in powdered sugar, icing or orange zest. A small amount of grain alcohol is added to the dough before cooking, this prevents oil from being absorbed into the center of the pastry during frying. Because of the pastry's popularity, Fat Thursday is also known as Pączki Day. In the US, areas with high Polish populations such as Chicago, IL or Buffalo, NY celebrate Pączki Day on Fat Tuesday instead.
Lent
In Polish "Lent" is called Wielki Post which means "great fast." Beginning Ash Wednesday, Poles will begin their fast, making sure to avoid meat on Wednesdays and Fridays until after Easter Sunday. They will cut down pussy willow branches (bazie, kotki) and place them in vases of water for use on Palm Sunday. Most Poles will attend Church to receive their ashes. During this period, people will attend church more frequently and visit "Our Lord's Grave" at various local churches.
During Lent, as Easter approaches, women will make pisanki (Easter eggs, singular: pisanka). The word comes from pisać which means "to write" and in Old Polish also meant "to paint." Egg decorating pre-dates Christianity in all Slavic cultures, and although it was adopted for Easter, many of the symbols on the eggs have not changed from their pagan forms (although many, of course, have been given Christian meanings). Most symbols are concerned with good luck, prosperity, good health, love, and Christ (symbolized as a star or rose; in pagan times, those symbols represented the solar deity Dadźbóg). Chicken, duck, and goose eggs are typically used for pisanki. There are five basic types of Easter eggs:
1. Krasznaki, which are made by boiling an egg with a plant or other natural decoction (brown from onion peels, pink from beet juice, green from shoots of young rye plants, golden from either marigolds of the bark of young apple trees, etc). These eggs come out a solid color with no other decoration.
2. Drapanki are made by taking a krasznaka and scratching the surface with a metal tool to reveal the white eggshell.
3. Pacenki are made through a batik-style method of covering parts of the eggshell with beeswax and then submerging the egg in a dye. This can be repeated with multiple colors, using the wax to preserve any color areas a person does not wish dyed over with the next color. The dye order works from light to dark and when the egg is finished, the wax is removed to reveal the pattern beneath.
4. Naklejanki are eggs decorated with scraps of paper, petals from elderberry flowers, or even cloth.
5. Oklejanki are eggs decorated with yarn or bulrush pith.
Traditionally only women made the eggs, and men could not even be present in the house while they were being made for fear they would cause bad luck or put a spell on the eggs. On Easter Sunday the pisanki would be exchanged between friends and family members. The eggs also have a special role on Śmigus-Dyngus (see below).
Wielki Tydzien (Holy Week)
Niedziela Kwietna (Palm Sunday) is when the pussy willow branches and other wildflower bouquets are brought to the church to be blessed. The branches are often decorated with colorful feathers, herbs, moss, flowers, and raspberry or currant twigs . Old folk traditions say swallowing one of the fuzzy buds from the branch on this day will bring good health for the year. They are paraded through town and around the parish, celebrating the entering of Jesus into Jerusalem. Touching a person with your palm/pussy willow branch ensures good luck and health in the coming year. The Palms may be kept through the whole year to help ward misfortunes and spiteful neighbors from the house.
On Wielka Sroda (Holy Wednesday) children would take an effigy of Judas and throw it from the church steeple before dragging it through town and beating it with sticks and stones. After it would be left to drown in a nearby pond or river.
Wielki Czwartek (Holy Thursday) commemorates the Last Supper. Priests and bishops wash the feet of 12 parishioners attending their Mass which is followed by the consecration of the Host for the last time before Easter. Some people will travel to seven local churches on this day and partake in the "Seven Churches Visitation." This is also the day a lot of women will begin to prepare food for the Easter feast.
Wielki Piatek (Good Friday) is considered the most somber day of the year, music is not played in homes and the day is spent in devotion. Church services will have bare altars and there will be no consecration of the Host. In many parishes, men or young boys will carry the crucifix through the streets following the path taken on Palm Sunday to the Church for the beginning of the Veneration of the Cross Mass. Altar boys carry special wooden clappers (klekotki, grzechotki) which imitate the sound of Jesus being nailed to the Cross. Plaintive hymns such as "Ludu, moj ludu" (People, my people) and "W Krzyzu cierpienie" (Suffering of the Cross) enhance the somber and mournful mood.
The blessing of the święconka (the Easter basket) occurs on Holy Saturday. A basket with Easter foods is brought to church to be bless. The baskets are lined with a white linen cloth (sometimes with embroidery), with boxwood (bukszpan) sprigs and ribbon wound around the handle. Poles take great pride in their baskets, and the larger the basket the better! Some people will even use drawers from their dressers! This tradition is one of the best loved of the Easter season. The baskets are sprinkled with Holy Water and three separate blessing (for the eggs, meats, and cakes and breads) are offered. Typically ham, kielbasa, salt, horseradish, various fruits, peeled hard-boiled eggs, and a butter lamb are included in a basket. Colorful pisanki are also included. The food included in symbolic, eggs for life and the Resurrection of Christ, salt for purity, ham for joy and abundance, horseradish for the bitterness of Christ's suffering, bread for Jesus, and the lamb for Christ. The tradition dates back into the 7th century (pre-Christian) and the more modern form (which includes the eggs and breads) from the 12th. Late in the evening (after dark) the Easter Vigil is held.
Easter Sunday
At dawn the church bells begin to ring and the Rezurekcja (Resurrection Procession) begins. The priest, altar boys, and parishioners will circle the church three times with the Blessed Sacrament while the organ plays for the first time since Good Friday, before entering for Mass.
After Easter Mass people return home and enjoy a breakfast filled with foods denied to them during Lent. Many of these foods had been blessed the day before. The table is covered in a white linen cloth and in the middle will be set pisanki, fresh flowers, figurines of chickens and roosters, and all the food. Before they begin eating, a family shares wedges from blessed eggs, similar to the opłatek at Christmas. Cold dishes such as ham, kielbasa, roasted meats, pâté (pasztat), hard-boiled eggs with various sauces, salad, and beet and horseradish relish (ćwikła) are served. Some families will start with a white soup with eggs and kielbasa called biały basszcz or zurek. After come some sweets such as babka, chruściki (fried ribbons of dough covered in powdered sugar), mazurek (a flat pastry with jam), and kolaczki (flaky or yeast-risen pastries filled with various fruit jams). The Lamb Cake, a pound cake shaped and decorated to look like lamb on grass and always carrying the Resurrection Banner, is one of the centerpieces of the meal. Breakfast was the main meal of the day, for supper, people usually have ham sandwiches on rye.
Śmigus-Dyngus
The day after Easter is called Wet Monday (Lany Poniedziałek in Polish) and is a time when Śmigus-Dyngus is celebrated. Boys will douse girls they like with water and spank her with pussy willow branches. Boys might even break into a home while a girl is sleeping and carry her to a nearby body of water and throw her in, sometimes they might even take the entire bed! The more attractive a girl was, the more likely she was going to be doused in water multiple times by multiple boys. To avoid having water thrown on her (or being thrown in), a girl could bargain with the boy and trade her pisanki to him in exchange for being left dry. A procession called chodzenie po dyngusie (going on the Dyngus) or chodzenie z kogutkiem (going with the cockerel; a reference to the use of a rooster, usually taken without permission and stuffed with grain soaked in vodka to make him crow loudly, or a decorated or carved wooden rooster is sometimes used as an alternative) would take place. Young boys would take the rooster door to door and crow and sing Dyngus songs wishing the homeowner good fortune and asking for food. Here is an example of a standard Dyngus song (in English):
Your duck has told me
That you've baked a cake
Your hen has told me
She's laid you a basket and a half of eggs
Your sow has told me that you've killed her son
If not her son then her little daughter
Give me something if only a bit of her fat
Who will not be generous today
Let him not count on heaven.
The origin of the word śmigus comes from śmigać which means "to swish with a cane." The origins of dyngus are a bit more obscure. It may come from the German dingeier (the eggs that are owned) or dingnis (ransom). New Cambridge Medieval History suggests the origin of the day lies in Western Poland. It is interesting to note that all Slavic countries have some form of this holiday (suggesting pagan origins). Particularly because this day is also celebrated in Hungary whose modern inhabitants are not Slavic, but who once had a large Slavic population that had been displaced or absorbed in Antiquity.
In the 1960s and '70s Dyngus Day was so popular in Buffalo, NY that papers reported that "everyone is Polish on Dyngus Day!"