An interesting question, isn’t it? So I‘d try to explain it to you from my girl’s point of view.
Easter is really one of the most important feasts in the Czech Republic. There are a lot of traditions connected with Easter and coming of the spring. Some of our traditions are probably the same as in your country: we send cards to our friends and relatives, fill Easter baskets with chocolate and candy, decorate eggs or prepare some traditional meals. But what is reallly special for us? Just one thing - an Easter whip. It is usually made from young willow branches and the whip is the real symbol of Czech Easter.
But you still don’t know, why there are no cushions in Czech families during the Easter Monday?
For a long time, Czech men and boys have given girls and women „Easter birching“. My father says that it means „a gentle, slight slapping on the backs with a bunch of birch sticks“. But don’t believe him!
Easter Monday is the only day during the year when boys and men can competently „beat“ every girls and women they know. It’s unfair! We can never beat the men! But it’s a tradition and girls can do nothing with it. So we have to collect every cushion which we have in the whole house or flat and put them inconspicuously into the trousers. They have to protect the „right places“. Yes, our buttocks :-)The right to give birching starts at midnight on Sunday and continues on Monday morning. It’s also believed that the first „bircher“ brings good luck to the house, so the housewife rewards him very well. Boys and men go around in groups visiting the houses of neighbours and relatives. Why? They whip every girl and woman they know to give them strenght of the waking nature. Ha, ha, ha - really a nice explanation. The girls have to bear it up and boys whip them with the birches - every boy himself or all together. In addition the boy has to sing or recite a special Easter carol and that could be very funny. Girls can only squeak: „Ooooops, no, please, stop, that’s enough! Don’t be so barbarous, so cruel, please stop!“
When the boy thinks that it’s enough, he gets from the girl a coloured ribbon which will decorate his whip. One ribbon from one girl. So if the boy knows a lot of girls and he visits them on Easter Monday, he will come home with quite a heavy whip with many ribbons. The number of the ribbons can say us, how the boy is popular (or unpopular, of course
:-))).
We mustn’t forget that after the „necessary procedure“ the bircher gets a lot of food: chocolate or sweets, sandwiches, sweet holiday bread „mazanec“ or sometimes money. However the most usual gift is one of decorated Easter eggs. For older boys and men (who don’t like chocolate so much) there is another „speciality“. Alcohol. Every housewife prepares a few bottles of good alcohol and many glasses. Every bircher who is older than 18 (don’t say it to the police, but sometimes the boys are a bit younger:-), gets 2 glasses of alcohol in each family - the first to the right leg and the second to the left leg. Probably you can imagine how the Czech boys and men (including fathers and grandfathers) look like at noon. Not very well. Unfortunately they often drive a car and that’s why you can „meet“ many cars in a ditch during this day. Easter Monday is also a „Golden Day“ for the police of course.
I have to admit that Easter Monday is really a very „exciting day“ for girls and boys too.
But Tuesday after it is certainly a bit worse for everybody. Why?
1) Everybody has to eat meals made of eggs for a few next days after Easter Monday
(„Please, no more eggs!“).
2) Girls can’t sit, because their buttocks are „decorated“ with a few bruises.
And boys? They have an excellent hangover - they have stomachache and a headache.
And they don’t want to listen the sentence : „The first glass to the left leg and the second glass to the right leg!“ any more in their life.
But on Easter Monday next year, you can guess what will happen again.....

Eva Kvasničková