Easter is over. It was fun, but now we can all relax…All that wonderful food! I love it, I always eat way too much!
So we talked about Palm Sunday traditions as well as Easter eggs in Poland.
Święconka is one of the most enduring and beloved Polish traditions. On Holly Saturday people take to churches decorated baskets containing a sampling of traditional food to be blessed: hard-boiled shelled eggs, ham, sausage, salt, horseradish, fruits, bread and cake. Prominently displayed among these is the Easter lamb, usually molded from butter or sugar and colorful pisanki. The food have a symbolic meaning, for example:
* eggs (jajka) – symbolize life and Christ’s resurrection,
* bread (chleb) – symbolic of Jesus,
* lamb (baranek, also means jagnięcina) – represents Christ,
* salt (sól) – represents purification,
* horseradish (chrzan) – symbolic of the bitter sacrifice of Christ,
* ham (szynka) – symbolic of great joy and abundance.
Where I grew up, we used to bring baskets to my grandparents house (our closest neighbors would do the same thing) and that was where priest would stop by to bless the food. I think the reason for that was that we lived pretty far away from the church.
The food blessed in the church (or at home) remains untouched until Sunday morning.
On Easter morning (Sunday), a special Resurrection Mass is celebrated in every church in Poland. At this Mass, a procession of priests, altar boys and the people circles the church three times while the church bells peal and the organ is played for the first time since they had been silenced on Good Friday. Following the Mass, people return home to eat the food blessed the day before.
The Easter table is covered with a white tablecloth. The white tablecloth is indicative of the white swaddling cloth with which Our Lord was wrapped when he was placed in the Holy Sepulcher. On the middle of the table in most homes people will put colored eggs, cold meats, coils of sausages, ham, yeast cakes, pound cakes, poppy-seed cakes, and a lamb made of sugar. Polish Easter Soup called Żurek or Biały Barszcz is often served at the Easter meal, garnished with the hard-boiled eggs and sausage. There is also tradition to share blessed eggs with the members of the family and wish each other good health, happiness for the rest of the year. In my house except of trying eggs, each one of us had to try a little piece of horseradish root.
During this time the Polish homes are with its spirit of joy and good-will at a laden Easter Table, with its sugar Lamb (cukrowy baranek) and its blessed multi-colored eggs.
Monday (just after Easter) is a holiday in Poland and is called in polish “Lany Poniedziałek” or “Śmigus- Dyngus”. This is a wonderful day of fun.
The ancient Polish tradition on Easter Monday, is celebrated by everyone with enthusiasm by sprinkling each other with water. Especially kids have fun this day. Some people say that by being splashed with water on Easter Monday will bring you good luck throughout the year.
And how did you spend your Easter?
Do następnego razu… (Till next time…)
Comments:
Ryan:
Hi. Fantastic blog. I’ve got a general question though. Sometimes the rss feed shows the entire post (including images), but most of the time I have to follow the link out to the web page to view the whole post. Would it be possible to make the entire post viewable on the rss feed, all of the time. Thanks.
Mary:
Interesting. Yours is the first web site that I have encountered that mentions sharing a bit of horseradish root. My father used to say a prayer over the horseradish root, and then make each of us take a piece. He would then pray over the egg and give each one a piece. I just found out that my dad, born in 1935, has approximately 3% Jewish ancestry by DNA testing. Assuming that a parent is 50% of ones genetic makeup, grandparent is 25%, 12.5, 6.25, 3.125, and assuming a generation of 30 years, then the Jewish ancestor would have been born around 1785. By this calculation, it appears possible that the ancestor was a child of members of the Jewish Frankist sect that converted to Catholicism in the mid eighteenth century. The sharing of horseradish evokes the Passover ritual. Any indication of a Jewish ancestry? Mediterranean features, like my grandfather had? A history of upper middle class or noble ancestry? Any suggestion of Jewish ancestry from a DNA testing service? (Some of the Frankists received land or titles in exchange for conversion. Granddad was a poor peasant, but it is possible that the child who married out of the Frankist group was a female. Females were more likely to have family approval for marrying a non-Frankist Catholic. And a female who had to marry out of her social class would more likely be marrying down.) Please feel free to e-mail me with any details. I really want to track down the origin of this tradition!