Easter in Poland Made by: Monika Kakw Karolina Fabianowska
Wiktoria Musia
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Easter is major holiday in Poland, and Easter celebrations are
not limited to Easter Sunday. Easter- related traditions take place
for more than a week in Poland.
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Easter days Holy Week lasts from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday.
Palm Sunday, the week before Easter Sunday, is marked by church
attendance with palm-leaf substitutes in the form of willow
branches or handmade bouquets of dried flowers. On Easter Saturday,
baskets of Easter food are taken to church to be blessed; the food
that is blessed is eaten as a part of the Easter Sunday meal.
Easter Monday is a family holiday in Poland and is called Smigus
Dyngus (also called Smingus-Dyngus), or Wet Monday, after the
practice of men and boys pouring water on women and girls.
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Easter traditions On Easter morning, 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 custom of coloring eggs for Easter is still
observed in Polish custom. The eggs are decorated with many
traditional Polish symbols of Easter. Most popular are lamb, cross,
floral designs or Easter's greetings such as Wesollego Alleluja. It
is interesting to mention that a Polish Easter is also a holiday
for the housewife. It is a tradition that Polish women do not cook,
do not work on Easter Sunday. During this time the Polish homes are
with its spirit of joy and good-will at a laden Easter Table, with
its sugar Lamb and its blessed multi-colored eggs called in polish
"pisanki".
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Food blessing/,,wiconka Swieconka is one of the most enduring
and beloved Polish traditions. On 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 -
symbolize life and Christ's resurrection, * bread - symbolic of
Jesus, * lamb - represents Christ, * salt - represents
purification, * horseradish - symbolic of the bitter sacrifice of
Christ, * ham - symbolic of great joy and abundance. The food
blessed in the church remains untouched until Sunday morning.
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Easter table The Easter table will be 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
housewife 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 Zurek or White Barscz 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.