Sunday's Sidenote - Egg Picking

Happy Easter! Hope everyone is enjoying their day. Beautiful and sunny here, so Mr. EB was able to leave his loot outdoors this year. I love watching Keira searching high and low for the eggs. She's the last, so I guess that makes it more special. A few more Easters, and I'm gonna have to wait for grandkids to experience that pure joy again. Anyway, I may have blogged about this back in the day, but can't remember.

We have an Easter tradition in our house called 'Picking Eggs'. It's an old Polish tradition that Bill grew up with in Baltimore, playing it every year with his very Polish grandparents (the Wielechowskis). We all pick a colored egg and ensue knocking them point to point or butt to butt. When one end is cracked, we switch ends and go again. You keep playing with your egg against everyone at the table until both ends are cracked. Who ever has an egg that doesn't crack wins. There's another version whereby when both ends of someone's egg are cracked, the winner keeps it. This doesn't work as well for us, since one guy usually ends up with a whole lotta cracked eggs that couldn't possibly be eaten in one breakfast :) Either way, the kids love it and look forward to it every year.

Here's a video of Riley, post-picking. His egg was undefeatable this year, and cracked all eleven opponents. He was very excited, and decided to see what was tougher, his skull or his egg...

I tried to find something online to learn more about the tradition and where it came from. Found one blogger whose grandfather was also Polish and from Baltimore and had great memories of picking eggs as a kid. He had no idea what it was called, but said that boys would roam the alleys on Easter asking "Who's got an egg?" or, more oddly, "who's gotta guinea?" and then they'd play. I also found another blogger writing about the Pennsylvania Dutch tradition of egg picking, very similar to the Polish version.

Egg breaking games have been popular for centuries in other countries, too. In England it is called egg-shackling. Egg-shackling is often associated with the Polish custom known as Dingus, or Smigus, and takes place on Easter Monday, or ‘Ducking Monday,’ as it is often called in Eastern Europe. Young men and girls splash each other vigorously with water, and it is after this procedure, when both sides are thoroughly wet, that the egg-shackling begins.

Hungarian sidenote. In Hungary, unmarried girls used to be seized by the local young men at daybreak on Ducking Monday, dragged off to some pond or stream, and thrown in. This was supposed to make them good potential wives! Unfortunately, this grand old custom, where it survives, is no longer quite so drastic. The girls are no longer ducked, but buckets of water are tipped over them, or they are generously sprinkled or splashed with water, or sprayed with perfume. They are, of course, expected to submit with good grace, and even in some areas, to pay for the privilege with gifts of painted eggs, or glasses of brandy (Palinka).

Riley and Liam used to do this on Easter Monday in the Hungarian village where we lived. They would go from house to house, spraying the young girls and sometimes old ladies with perfume, getting chocolate or money in return. I remember one year, they each came home with a mountain of chocolate and more than 2,000 forints ($10). Seems strange to me that there isn't much left here in the way of century-old customs. Why is that? As I watched my kids peering into their baskets this morning, filled with lots of store-bought sugar and video games, I had a glimpse of why.

There's a beautiful village in Hungary called Hollókő, where we spent several Easter Sundays, observing the rich culture and tradition that defines it. The folk costumes, the dancing, several generations looking on as they come together to celebrate Easter. Imagine, they weren't permitted to celebrate religious holidays for half of a century under communism, and yet, somehow, tradition lives on.

Before I post, wanted to shift back to egg-picking for a minute. Can you imagine, we were invited to have Easter dinner with friends, and discovered when we got there that they too, have an egg-picking tradition, called Egg Wars at their house. My friend is Bulgarian, so obviously this is further evidence that it originated in Eastern Europe. Here are a couple of photos of Keira and Johnny, crushing eggs.