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Switch Hitters

We were surprised to see that there weren't any articles today decrying the brutal traditions of Czech Easter Monday. When Prague was a little better fresher as a place for Americans to expatriate, the anti-Velikonoce editorial was a popular annual event, usually in right thinking newspapers like the Wall Street Journal.

For those who don't know, every year on Easter Monday, Czech men hit women on the butt with a stick and are rewarded with alcohol. It's a little more complex than that; the boys cut down a young willow branch, and braid it into a stick called a pomlazka. Then they switch girls on the backside with it, roaming the local village all Easter Monday morning. There's a poem they must recite to accompany the switching, which is all about making the ladies more fertile in the coming year, and some Czech women think it's bad luck if they are not hit with the pomlazka. When the poem is over, the boys get candy or a shot of booze from the girls as a reward.

Yeah, it's a little backwards; domestic violence is only a tradition in the U.S. on Super Bowl Sunday. Still, it's way more fun than filing your taxes was over the weekend.

Related Stories:
·   Easter in the CR [Radio CZ]