Gallery: "poland"
Easter Monday is a holiday in Poland (O to be in Poland, now that spring is there!). And, traditionally, it is the day when village boys chase village girls and douse them with water.
I have a modest collection of Polish folk art and one of the pieces depicts three young men in traditional dress pouring eternal buckets of water over two resigned and woeful young girls.
The act is an old fertility rite and, depending on your viewpoint, a precursor of the wet T-shirt contest. Not much celebrated in Poland now, Dyngus Day, as it is called there, is a big deal in Buffalo, NY, where parties are held throughout the city, including at the Mickiewicz Club. My goal is to one year usher in Lent in New Orleans and then usher it out in Buffalo.
Before it's over, I'd like to wish everyone a happy Fat Thursday, or Tlusty Czwartek as they say in Poland.
Poland's the only Catholic country I know of that celebrates the Thursday before Lent, but no Pole has ever been able to tell me why. People buy paczki (pronounced "ponchki"), delicous balls of fried dough (to call them doughnuts doesn't really do them justice) their moist and airy insides holding, ideally, small reserves of rose petal jam.
So, a paczek to the first person who explains to me the origin of Fat Thursday.