Countdown to Smigus Dyngus
Next Dyngus Day: April 13th, 2009
This site is dedicated to greatest day of the year, when the whole world is Polish for a day (at least in Buffalo, NY). Beer, kielbasa, polka music, dancing, pussywillows, and squirt guns, what else could you ask for.
History of Dyngus Day
In Poland, traditionally, boys will awaken girls early in the morning and douse them with water and strike them about the legs with long thin twigs or switches made from willow, birch or decorated tree branches (palmy wielkanocne). This practice is possibly connected to a pre-Christian, pagan fertility rite, that seems in line with the Ancient Roman Lupercalia, although the earliest documented records of Dyngus Day in Poland are from the 15th century, almost half a millennium after Poland adopted Christianity.
Early in the Polish evolution of the tradition, the Dyngus custom was clearly differentiated from Smigus: Dyngus was the exchange of gifts (usually eggs, often decorated like pisankas), under the threat of water splashing if one party did not have any eggs ready, while Smigus (from Smigac, to whoosh, ie make a whipping noise) referred to the striking.
Later the focus shifted to the courting aspect of the ritual, and young unmarried girls were the only acceptable targets. A boy would sneak into the bedroom of the particular girl he fancied and awaken her by completely drenching her with multiple buckets of water. Politics played an important role in proceedings, and often the boy would get access to the house only by arrangement with the girl's mother.
Throughout the day, girls would find themselves the victims of drenchings and leg-whippings, and a daughter who wasn't targeted for such activities was generally considered to be beznadziejna (hopeless) in this very coupling-oriented environment.
Most recently, the tradition has changed to become entirely water-focused, and the Smigus part is almost forgotten. It is quite common for girls to attack boys just as fiercely as the boys traditionally attacked the girls. With much of Poland's population residing in tall apartment buildings, high balconies are favourite hiding places for young people who gleefully empty entire buckets of water onto randomly selected passers-by.
Courtesy of Wikipedia
