The Indelible Bonobo Experience

Renaissance Monkey: in-depth expertise in Jack-of-all-trading. I mostly comment on news of interest to me and occasionally engage in debates or troll passive-aggressively. Ask or Submit 2 mah authoritah! ;) !

Text Post

Easter’n Eastern’rope

fyeaheasterneurope:

Romanians Revel in Rich Easter Traditions

Orthodox believers in Romania are gearing up to celebrate Easter with their usual fervour on April 15, drawing on a rich variety of Easter traditions that Romanians have preserved.

The celebrations started with Holy Week, usually held a week later than Catholic Holy week. Despite the different date, it also begins with Palm Sunday (Florii, in Romanian), when Jesus entered Jerusalem and ends on Easter Sunday, marking Christ’s resurrection.

While most Christians observe these festivals, Romanians do things their own way. On Good Thursday, people take food and drink to church and boiled eggs are painted.

Tradition says that if the eggs turn red this day, they will keep from spoiling all year. The favoured colour for Easter eggs is, therefore red, but other colours like green, yellow or blue, are also used.

In some parts of Romania, mainly in Bukovina, in the north, there is a tradition of colouring eggs, using different geometrical and floral motifs. The process involves various paints and wax. The egg painting ritual still survives, but only a few people still know this art.

The tradition on Good Friday is to place flowers in church for Christ and to pass under a table three times, signifying the pains that Christ endured when he carried his cross to his hill of crucifixion at Golgotha.

On the night between Holy Saturday and Easter [Passion] Sunday, people go to church to celebrate the resurrection by attending midnight mass, where they light candles. They take the lighted candles home to keep the holy spirit alight in their homes, souls and lives.

At home, they eat certain Easter dishes, which include “Pasca”, a traditional Easter cake, a sweet bread called “Cozonac”, which is a slightly sweet yeast-raised egg bread, lamb soup and lamb steak. They also eat haggis, a traditional Easter dish made from the organs of a lamb, and, of course the painted eggs.

The coloured Easter eggs can be eaten now, as they are boiled, but only after the tradition of tapping the eggs between two people. This involves making a saying with religious connotations. The first person says, “Christ has risen” [“Hristos a inviat”], while the second responds, “He is risen indeed” - in Romanian, “Adevarat a inviat”.

On Easter Sunday morning, people usually go to church for the Easter morning mass. This mass is not as well attended as the midnight mass. After that, they go back home and eat the blessed food, which they have taken with them to the church.

There are many other local Easter traditions. In Bukovina, on the night of Easter, there is the custom of fire vigils. Fires are lit on hills and burn all night. In Transylvania, young girls are sprayed with perfume by boys dressed in traditional clothes on Easter Monday. This way, the girls will have good luck all year.

If Romanian cozonak is anything like Bulgarian kozunak (which is also eaten at Easter), it is one of MY FAVORITE THINGS EVER. Nom nom nom so delicious.

I believe they also do the perfume spraying in Hungary.

The best tradition is in Czech R & Slovakia, where men lovingly whip women’s bum with a special whip (cf wikipedia):

In the Czech Republic andSlovakia, a tradition of spanking or whipping is carried out onEaster Monday. In the morning, men spank women with a special handmade whip called a pomlázka (in Czech) or korbáč (in Slovak), or, in eastern Moravia and Slovakia, throw cold water on them. The pomlázka/korbáč consists of eight, twelve or even twenty-four withies (willow rods), is usually from half a meter to two meters long and decorated with coloured ribbons at the end. The spanking is not painful or intended to cause suffering. A legend says that women should be spanked with a whip in order to keep their health and beauty during the whole next year.

An additional purpose can be for men to exhibit their attraction to women; unvisited women can even feel offended. Traditionally, the spanked woman gives a coloured egg and sometimes a small amount of money to the man as a sign of her thanks. In some regions, the women can get revenge in the afternoon or the following day when they can pour a bucket of cold water on any man. The habit slightly varies across Slovakia and the Czech Republic. A similar tradition existed in Poland (where it is called Dyngus Day), but it is now little more than an all-day water fight.

Now you know why Czech and Slovak women are so sexy.. :)

Posted in Czech Easter Eastern Europe Poland Romania Slovakia folklore traditions spanking
Photo Post
spanking & leaving: good 4 u

spanking & leaving: good 4 u

Posted in spanking superman laura mcphee black and white cartoon comics
Photo Post
the rate of hospital admissions related to SIDS is actually lower than the rate of child abuse — 50 per 100,000 children under age 1 for SIDS, compared with 58.2 per 100,000 births, according to research published Monday in the journal Pediatrics. More: Nearly 4,600 U.S. children were hospitalized with broken bones, traumatic brain injury and other serious damage caused by physical abuse in 2006, according to a new report. Babies younger than one were the most common victims, with 58 cases per 100,000 infants. That makes serious abuse a bigger threat to infant safety than SIDS, or sudden infant death syndrome, researchers say in the report. The researchers estimate that the hospitalizations cost about $73.8 million in 2006, although that’s only a fraction of the overall cost of abuse to society. A new analysis concludes that spanking fails to alter kids’ behavior in the long term. What it does instead is amp up their aggression. (Canadian Medical Association Journal) Moms and dads who spank do so because they believe it’s effective, and research actually shows that it is — in the short term. A child reaching for a tempting object will stop if he gets swatted. “It does work in the immediate moment, but beyond that, in most cases, it’s very ineffective,” says George Holden, the study’s author and a professor of psychology at Southern Methodist University. “The most common long-term consequence is that children learn to use aggression.” In some countries, spanking is not a choice. Durrant is currently living in Sweden, where she’s researching child-and-family policies and the evolution of that country’s law prohibiting physical discipline of children. In 1979, Sweden was the first country to pass such legislation; now 32 countries — including much of Europe, Costa Rica, Israel, Tunisia and Kenya — have a similar law. (..)  In Sweden, for example, new parents are hooked up with support groups and given information about developmental stages. There may be some cause for optimism: in cases tracked by state Child Protective Service agencies, physical abuse has declined by 55% between 1990 and 2010. Leventhal is in the early stages of comparing more than a decade of data, but so far he has not found a substantial decrease. Based on data from the 2006 Kids’ Inpatient Database, the last such numbers available, Leventhal’s team found that six out of every 100,000 children under 18 were hospitalized with injuries ranging from burns to wounds to brain injuries and bone fractures. (via Reuters, Time, Spanking)

the rate of hospital admissions related to SIDS is actually lower than the rate of child abuse — 50 per 100,000 children under age 1 for SIDS, compared with 58.2 per 100,000 births, according to research published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

More:

  • Nearly 4,600 U.S. children were hospitalized with broken bones, traumatic brain injury and other serious damage caused by physical abuse in 2006, according to a new report. Babies younger than one were the most common victims, with 58 cases per 100,000 infants. That makes serious abuse a bigger threat to infant safety than SIDS, or sudden infant death syndrome, researchers say in the report.

    The researchers estimate that the hospitalizations cost about $73.8 million in 2006, although that’s only a fraction of the overall cost of abuse to society.

  • A new analysis concludes that spanking fails to alter kids’ behavior in the long term. What it does instead is amp up their aggression. (Canadian Medical Association Journal)
  • Moms and dads who spank do so because they believe it’s effective, and research actually shows that it is — in the short term. A child reaching for a tempting object will stop if he gets swatted. “It does work in the immediate moment, but beyond that, in most cases, it’s very ineffective,” says George Holden, the study’s author and a professor of psychology at Southern Methodist University. “The most common long-term consequence is that children learn to use aggression.”
  • In some countries, spanking is not a choice. Durrant is currently living in Sweden, where she’s researching child-and-family policies and the evolution of that country’s law prohibiting physical discipline of children. In 1979, Sweden was the first country to pass such legislation; now 32 countries — including much of Europe, Costa Rica, Israel, Tunisia and Kenya — have a similar law. (..)  In Sweden, for example, new parents are hooked up with support groups and given information about developmental stages.
  • There may be some cause for optimism: in cases tracked by state Child Protective Service agencies, physical abuse has declined by 55% between 1990 and 2010. Leventhal is in the early stages of comparing more than a decade of data, but so far he has not found a substantial decrease.
  • Based on data from the 2006 Kids’ Inpatient Database, the last such numbers available, Leventhal’s team found that six out of every 100,000 children under 18 were hospitalized with injuries ranging from burns to wounds to brain injuries and bone fractures.

(via Reuters, Time, Spanking)

Posted in child abuse spanking early childhood education violence parenting