Where do you start? Many stem from ancient folklore and are specific to certain areas, usually reflecting the desire among people to get out and about on the first holiday of spring and the end of a fasting period. That's why we get Easter Parades, Easter Bonnets, egg-rolling festivals, etc.

But surely the oddest custom used to take place in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, where there was a tradition of spanking or whipping of woman on Easter Monday. In the morning, males throw water at females and spank them with a special handmade whip, consisting of eight, 12 or even 24 withies (willow rods), which is usually from half a metre to two metres long and decorated with coloured ribbons at the end. The spanking is symbolic and normally not painful or intended to cause suffering. A legend says females should be spanked in order to keep their health and beauty during the next year.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/thi...cle2426203.ece

part of the springtime celebration of fertility orgy no doubt ;-)

No thanks. I'm cool with being Jewish, staying in, and watching the Phillies game. Hahahahhaa

[sidony]

okay that's just weird.....

Sid

[Maven]

Consensual spanking is one thing, but this sounds like public spanking...a little too kinky for me, LOL!

[Juliana]

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Maven said:
Consensual spanking is one thing, but this sounds like public spanking...a little too kinky for me, LOL!

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LOL! Me too. I'm going to eat turkey with my family on Easter Monday. I'll take that over public spanking any day.

aw... all in good fun surely. it did use to be a public celebration of fertility (generation and rebirth) after all...

hence the egg (as a sign of fertility)

and the rabbit (ever hear the saying 'breed like rabbits' lol)

the pagans /heathens were more willing to give up theur gods than their festivals...

and chocolate stimulates neurotransmitters that are normally released when you are in love / lust...

[SecretGarden]

This was interesting and I am glad you shared it as it did give me a smile. I think you have the concept down... down to the chocolate. I suppose this might spark the libido of both if all in fun but might this also increase infidelities. Take a look at the lady next door...whooo hooo.

Also, in the spirit of equality.... I want to know when the men have a similar public event? Now that I would show up for.

i might be thinking of may day... yeah the notion was that infidelity was acceptable for the duration of the festival.

> May Day. Ancient Rites that survived. Celts had several festivities such as Beltane which was the last and largest of the spring festivals, falling on April 30th or May 1st (its name come from “Bealtaine” in old Gaelic, which means “fire of Bel” the Celtic god of light); the other festivals were Ostara (now Easter), the Summer Solstice and Samhain.

Beltane, as a custom survived in various parts of Europe, such as France, Germany and England. It included setting up a village May-pole. It involved dancing and great sexual frolics around this gigantic phallic symbol which represented gods phallus in Mother Earth. After dancing around the Maypole celebrants would retire to the open fields where they would have sex with anyone and everyone in the plowed fields in order to insure the fertility of the land and prosperous yield of crops3.

Napier 6 concluded that the English May feasts are a survival of Roman Floralia, introduced by Rome into Britain and imposed on the original Celt population, which kept it and nutured it after the fall of Rome. He also says that during the middle ages, they "were not free from some of the indecencies of the Floralia". Judging by the dates, May Day also coincides with Faunalia, so a mixed origin of different fertility rites can be assigned to this Celtic celebration.

For these reasons of sexual license, the Christian Church opposed May festivals and the sexual freedom it promoted: Phillip Stubes, an English Puritan writer said (Anatomie of Abuses - 1583):
"What clipping, what culling, what kissing and bussing, what smooching and slobbering one of another, what filthy groping and unclean handling is not practiced in the dances."

Regarding free sex in the fields, says Stubbes:
"Against May, Whitsonday, or other time, all the yung men and maides, olde men and wives, run gadding over night to the woods, groves, hils, and mountains, where they spend all the night in plesant pastimes; ... and in the morning they return... there is a great Lord present amongst them, as superintendent and Lord over their pastimes and sportes, namely, Sathan, prince of hel. ... I have heard it credibly reported (and that viva voce) by men of great gravitie and reputation, that of fortie, threescore, or a hundred maides going to the wood over night, there have scaresly the third part of them returned home againe undefiled."4. Another Puritan wrote that men "doe use commonly to runne into woodes in the night time, amongst maidens, to set bowes, in so muche, as I have hearde of tenne maidens whiche went to set May, and nine of them came home with childe" 7.

But all good things come to an end, and the sixteenth century saw the end of May freedom. The Puritans in England made the Maypoles illegal in 1644. They also attempted to suppress the greenwood marriages of young men and women who spent the entire night in the forest. The practice continued for some time, but eventually died out.

http://www.eioba.com/a70752/orgies_a_brief_history

ah... the things i remember from social studies in school ;-)

[Maven]

ROFLMAO!!!