Nothing prepared me for the Czech Easter tradition - even when I knew about it in advance. While at university, I worked in a restaurant. One of my colleagues was Czech. During our shift one Easter, conversation naturally drifted to what people did in the Czech Republic at this time.
'We beat our girls,' he said, elbow deep in dishwater.
'You beat girls?' I replied, hands fixed on a column of clean plates.
'Yes, we beat girls,' he said, slapping one suddy hand into the cup of the other. 'It's good,' he said and returned to the dishes.
It was only when I arrived here that I discovered that it was not by hand but with a long whip of plaited willow branches called a pomlázka. Young boys strike girls with these whips in exchange for colored eggs after reciting a short poem. After six years of living here, I'm no more comfortable with this custom.
I've never got a straight answer as to how hard a girl is hit with a pomlázka. Some people have said it is simply a light tap. Others have said that it can be a sharper whack. Curious, I asked my wife to demonstrate how hard it can be just with her hand. It smarted. I can only imagine how it would feel with a willow whip.
The explanations of this tradition vary as much as the force of the hit. One common answer is that the ritual is a way of keeping women healthy, young and beautiful. The anthropological explanation is that it is a remnant of a pagan fertility rite - the whip symbolically fertilizing the girls' eggs.
Feminist comentators understandably take a dim view of the tradtition. Diana Bensova writing on the website feminismus.cz (in Czech) sums up the tradition. "Our version of the Easter tradition is the essence of patriarchy. A subjugating man - a hero - whips as many women as possible. Furthermore, he is rewarded for this violence."
Lena Nevis in the website zena.cz (in Czech) offered an opposing opinion. "Honestly, to claim that the annual event with the pomlázka makes monsters out of men and victims out of women would be sheer foolishness." She goes on to say that if a parent explains the tradition in an amusing way "the child won't comprehend the humiliation towards the mother."
At first, the issue of the pomlázka seems an ideal discussion topic for the classroom. I stopped asking students whether the custom was degrading when I got the same answer after the fourth year - a few shrugs and a couple of young women telling me it was simply what they did here. Obviously, the classroom is not the best place to conduct surveys. Students often feel intimidated to give opinions, especially if they perceive those opinions may make them unpopular with their peers.
Some of my colleagues are equally phlegmatic about the tradition. A common response to my question is that they don't mind. However, I've yet to meet a woman tell me she was offended by not being visited as stated in the Czech wikipedia entry (in Czech) concerning the tradition.
The abundance of pomlázkas for sale through out the country suggests the demand is hardly waning. And as I write a a young boy thrashes his new pomlázka through the air. His mother and grandmother look on proudly. This is a telling image as any that the tradition is firmly in place for another year.
Maybe you should accept it and STFU. It's tradition. Stop being a bitch about a little whip. The reason why the US just has holidays turn into corporate events is because all we can do is buy and work. A bland, safe, politically correct society. that is what the US is.
if you can't get rid of something, add a counter balance. Is there a holiday tradition that empowers woman? If not, let's add one. Then it all balances out