Easter in Prague

I meant to write stuff about Easter DURING Easter, but clearly that didn't happen, so I'm catching up. Prague goes all out for holidays, which is really fun! Several weeks before Easter already the city began decorating the trees with colorful streamers and eggs, horse drawn carriage rides were offered in the Old Town Square and a music festival was set up in the square as well. For some pictures of this check out my Easter in Prague photos on facebook. I have the decorations and the music stage etc. on there.

Everywhere in Prague also sold really intricately painted Easter eggs and sticks (willow branches). The tradition is for the men to go around on Easter morning and hit the women with the sticks to make them beautiful. The women then do something in return. In Bohemia the tradition is to pour water on the men, but in Moravia the women give them an egg and then a cup of brandy or some candy. The men carry out this tradition in the morning on Easter Monday. It was really widespread and popular during the communist years (mainly because the communist regime didn't allow any religious celebrations to occur), but even this past Easter Monday I was shocked by how many men and boys were going house to house with their sticks really doing it, both in Klanovice and in the city center. Henk helped Alex make a willow stick and then encouraged him to whip me and Ivana as much as possible.

The egg tradition is to paint eggs like we do in the US, but then they have little competitions with them. Two people take an egg and put them end to end and then push them together. The goal is to be the person holding the egg which cracks the least, because then you win and go on to compete against someone else and their egg. We did that for quite awhile during dinner on Easter Monday with the boys and we had egg shell parts ALL over the floor!