Jana from Learn.Make.Think shares a story from her childhood in Slovakia. This is a short excerpt:

The days leading to the Easter weekend, us – the girls – spent scrubbing the house top to bottom; washing windows, dusting carpets, waxing floors, starching curtains and decorating both indoor and out before we got to “relax” in the kitchen. We had to dye  the eggs, bake Easter bread pudding and wrap all the gingerbread Easter bunnies my mom would make each year. Arranging them in baskets alongside all the chocolate eggs in colourful wrappers without being allowed to munch on any of them has always constituted child abuse in my eyes.

That, and what would traditionally happen on Easter Monday:

You see, the boys had only one task to complete on Easter weekend: take a walk to the woods, find a willow tree, select 8 longest, thinnest and the most flexible branches and braid them into a whip.

So that they could whip us.

Right before (or after, or both) they throw us into an ice-cold stream.  Or a pond. Or a bathtub. All because they have our well-being at heart. After all, according to a tradition dating back to pagan days, the cold water strengthens our health while being whipped with willow braids full of fresh sap is supposed to make us more fertile.

Jana tells her story with a sad humor and intersperses the hard words with lovely pictures of her colorful painted Easter eggs. It’s a heck of a read.

Read the whole story at Jana’s blog.