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My girl friend is all excited because she thinks a friend will let her get some willow branches for Easter :).

My mom’s home town is just over the mountains in Poland and she told me about the day after easter being “Shmingus Dingus” - mutual water fights day. She never said anything about beating the girls with a whip so I suspect there is Czech blood in my family tree.

I read that 10% of the people in the US enjoy spanking as a form of entertainment.

Boy, I would certainly be apprehensive of Easter every year, if I had that experience! That sounds like a fraternity party gone wrong! I do recall getting a spanking on my birthday…one for each year and one to ‘grow on’. (It wasn’t a spanking that hurt, and not one that I recall past like my 8th birthday, but still a very strange tradition.)Our Easter went something like this: I woke up at the crack of dawn on Easter morning to find an easter basket filled with chocolates and easter grass and marshmellow peeps and usually a coloring book of some sort, along with a huge chocolate bunny and a stuffed animal bunny. I had absolutely no clue what Easter actually represented–that Jesus rose from the dead on the third day after dying on the cross on Good Friday. No clue that Jesus died for me, and in doing so, gave me the opportunity to have a personal relationship with Him, for eternity. No, I thought it was about copious amounts of candy. After the easter baskets were torn apart and all the contents consumed, my sister and I would put on our easter dresses and have a brunch with family in the afternoon. Anyhow, now that I’m married with three little children, I plan to give them the Easter basket with a little bit of chocolate, a coloring book and to tell them about Jesus and his sacrifice for all of us. I pray that they have the hope in the Lord that I did not have as a child. Perhaps they will be more at peace than I was as a girl!

I agree Vonya, the real spirit of Easter has somehow completely disappeared….what do Easter bunnies and colored eggs have to do with Jesus being crucified on the cross??

There is an idea! Now it all makes sense….
One of my readers wrote sent me an article print-out explaining the “women-beating” tradition and here it goes (unfortunatelly it doesn’t add up with the above proposed “Jesus is the reason for the season” hypothesis):
“Slapping Custom Background”
[I]t’s not only Ashkenazic Jews [Jews from central and eastern Europe] who have/had the custom of slapping girls in the face at menarche. It’s an old Slavic custom, although in Slavic tradition it was the father and not the mother who did the slapping. I suspect the Ashkenazic custom derives from that, although among Jews it would have to be a woman doing the slapping because of the laws of niddah.

My Slavic mother, who converted to Judaism, never slapped me, nor was she slapped by her father, but she was the one who originally told me about this custom. As it was explained to me, the purpose of the slapping (at least among Slavs) was to bring a rush of blood to the girl’s face and thus to keep her from bleeding excessively at the lower end of her torso. I’ve observed during extensive travels through Eastern Europe, mostly in small towns and rural areas, that there are a lot of Slavic folk customs are quite similar to those of Ashkenazic Jews, so this explanation makes at least as much sense as any other, if not more, considering that as far as I know there isn’t a belief about menstrual “uncleanliness” among Slavs (Christian or Pagan) which compares to that in traditional Jewish belief and practice.

Having only recently read the article, by Caren Appel-Slingbaum, about the slapping of Jewish girls by their mothers upon menstruating for the first time, I would just like to add that this was done to me by my mother. My mother, who is of Polish origin, told me that she did this because she never wanted me to lose color in my face (ie. never be pale). Presumably, the slapping process retains a healthy color on our faces. My mother’s handprint on my face cheek disappeared rather quickly, and I am still always pale. Thank goodness for blush make-up. And so much for this tradition which I am happy to report ends with me as I will not do likewise to my daughter!