I had originally intended to do this post on a uniquely polish traditional holiday however, I became particularly intrigued by this particular event which is celebrated in multiple nations surrounding Poland as well, albeit in a slightly different manner. Dyngus Day (the same day as easter monday) is a holiday in which men douse women with water and whip their legs with switches. The origins of this holiday are widely disputed among scholars, some claiming that it is an attempted adaptation of pagan purity rituals into the christian calender much like the tradition of spring fertility imagery has been adapted into the christian easter tradition while others claim that it is a long standing polish courting tradition that has nothing to do with religious practices and developed at least 200 years before the introduction of Christianity into Poland.
Although the holiday is intriguing in its originality and origins, what interested me the most about it is how changes that have developed over time in its practices reflect back upon the similar changes that occurred within the Polish culture and society. Specifically that the longstanding cultural tradition was adapted in the late 1900s to allow for a day in which women were allowed to practice the same actions against the men in their community. This tradition became associated with Easter tuesday, the day after Dyngus day. A few decades later in the early 2000s the tradition adapted to men dousing men with water, women dousing women, and men and women dousing each other all on Dyngus day. I find that this is a prime example of the ways in which Polish culture has reacted quickly to the changes in societal norms that have occurred over the last seventy years, namely the feminist movement and the introduction of homosexuality as a socially acceptable construct. That is to say that the creation of the second day of the tradition which provide women the freedom to respond to the affronts they encountered on Dyngus day and the ability for men to douse men and women to douse women were not adaptations that were lobbied for and that struggled to gain momentum, but were natural and accepted additions which attested to the cultural malleability of Poland. If such a shift in an American cultural shift would, in my opinion, take hundreds of years if it were not implemented by law. An example of the United States' cultural rigidity in this regard is the difficulties and law suits that have arisen in attempting to remove the necessary recitation of "Under God" in the pledge of allegiance by children in schools whose families do not subscribe to the Abrahamic religions. I think such radical differences between the cultural malleability of America and Poland reflect the ways in which the two nations have developed, namely that Poland's history has been fraught with being conquered by neighboring titans and forced to adopt their cultural understandings while America has remained entirely unoppressed and instead has become accustomed to asserting its understandings and practices upon other nations. As such it may be that the Poles have come to understand the meanings of traditions not in their strict adherence but rather in their overall observation while Americans feel the need to remain unyielding cultural models for the foreigners they wish to change.
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