How we celebrate Easter in Pomerania

Easter 2021 is another holiday with a question mark over the festivities due to the Coronavirus pandemic. On the plus side, the very intimate nature of celebrations that we already know from both last year’s Easter and Christmas prompts greater interest in local traditions. Unable to celebrate, as usual, people seek to renew the old customs and rituals, even in small, modest circles of the closest family.

In the Polish tradition, Easter has a number of common features, like the appearance of Easter eggs, traditional dishes and the way of celebrating Easter Monday. Still, each region has at least several individual versions of the celebrations. Pomerania and Kashubia can really surprise in this regard.

Easter in Pomerania mostly looks like everywhere else in Poland and in other parts of the Christian world. The major events that take place is the Paschal Triduum – a religious celebration of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. On Maundy Thursday, all churches perform the feet-washing ritual that symbolizes the humility of Jesus’ disciples. The faithful also commemorate the Last Supper. Good Friday is the only day in the whole year without a holy mass. Instead, there is a reenactment of the Lord’s Passion with the adoration of the cross. On Saturday there is a traditional food blessing followed by the Holy Sepulcher’s adoration lasting all night and the entire Holy Saturday until the Easter Vigil. It is a glorious celebration with the Service of Light and baptismal liturgy with the baptismal promise renewal. It ends with a  solemn chant of the Alleluia symbolizing the resurrection of Christ. 

However, in Pomerania, there is a unique custom preceding this special time. On Wednesday, just before the Triduum, young people go to a nearby river or lake and drown a straw man, symbolizing the traitor of Christ. The Drowning of Judas is still popular in some parts of this region.

There is also an interesting tradition known as bomblowanie celebrated on Saturday night. Several people from the village gather at three in the morning and go from house to house hitting a big drum. This is a way to ensure that no one will oversleep and miss the morning mess. This tradition is still kept alive in the Jastarnia area.

The first morning mass on Ester is called the Resurrection. During it, a procession with the Blessed Sacrament walks around the church. On this day, people eat Easter breakfast, starting with exchanging traditional wishes and sharing the food from the Easter basket. In Pomerania, after the feast, there is time for traditional games. The feasters play a game called waletka, the rules are simple. Each of the participants bowls the egg on the table, the winner is the person who keeps their egg’s shell undamaged the longest.

Easter Monday in Poland is called Wet Monday or Śmigus-Dyngus. It’s a day when every outing brings a danger of getting wet, and the spring rain is not the main reason. According to this popular Polish custom, people pour water on each other. In some parts of Pomerania, there is an alternative tradition called Dry Dungus. In the past, a few days before Easter, young boys cut birch branches and put them in the water in order to grow leaves. On Easter Monday, the boys took their twigs, barged in the rooms of single women and young brides, and lashed their legs and hands with twigs. This symbolic whipping was supposed to bring new life to the woman’s body. In Kashubia, there is still a similar custom of lashing the young ladies’ legs with a juniper birch that in the past was believed to spell a quick marriage.

The celebration of Easter in Poland begins a week before Easter Sunday with Palm Sunday, the inseparable element of which is Easter palms. Traditional Kashubian palms were not as decorative and colourful as in other parts of Poland. They were made of willow and boxwood twigs. On Palm Sunday, such hand-made palms were taken to church and blessed. There are many superstitions and traditions associated with Easter palms. For example, it was believed that dropping a blessed palm on the ground brings bad luck, so the Kashubians had to be especially careful on their way back from the church. Easter palms were hung in houses, most often next to holy pictures, to protect the household members in the following year. They were kept there all year round, and on the following Palm Sunday, the old palm was burned in a furnace and replaced with a new one.

Eggs are one of the most important symbols of Easter. They are put in the Easter basket, served on the breakfast tables, and used as house decorations. They symbolize new life and vitality. The Poles are used to calling all the decorated eggs prepared for Easter pisanki, but traditionally, there were many variations of decorated eggs, each called differently depending on the style of decoration and the region of origin. Pomerania is held sway by kraszanki – eggs dyed in a brew prepared with natural ingredients like onion skin, chestnut, beet juice, or young rye shoots. Pomeranian kraszanki often had scratched-out intricate artistic designs. Traditional Kraszanki came to Kashubia after World War I and were far more plain than decorative eggs we see today. They were often made of uniformly dyed goose eggs.

Pomeranian holiday specialities include the eggs prepared in ten ways, in the company of the baked white sausage, bundt cakes and mazurki – traditional polish Easter baking similar to shortcake. However, the festive table’s true stars were the soups –  sour soup (żurek) and the white borscht (barszcz biały). Pomerania also has an interesting Easter appetizer – the meat jelly with vegetables and eggs called by a funny name zimne nóżki meaning cold legs.

Easter in Pomerania very much resembles the way this holiday is celebrated throughout the country, but there are some one of a kind regional customs that are cultivated only there. Dry dyngus, bomblowanie and kraszanki – characteristic Kashubian Easter eggs are unique elements of the Easter tradition of Pomerania.