Easter Monday is celebrated worldwide as a holiday with roots in post-Resurrection celebration and reverence of Christ’s resurrection. It is also used as a secular spring holiday, with some countries celebrating it as Wet Monday or Dyngus Day. In the US, it is observed unofficially in North Dakota and with an egg-throwing contest at the White House. Dyngus Day is mainly celebrated in Poland and the Czech Republic, where boys drench girls with water and poke them with twigs. In other areas, Easter Monday is simply a public holiday for outdoor activities.
Easter Monday refers to the Monday after Easter and is often considered a holiday and celebrated in many areas of the world. In terms of faith, the observance of Easter Monday has its roots in a post-Resurrection celebration and reverence of Christ’s resurrection, but the holiday has also been used in secular form as a sort of spring holiday, celebrating the season and saying goodbye to winter. Some countries, such as Poland and the Czech Republic, celebrate the day as Wet Monday or Dyngus Day. In other countries, the holiday is simply a time to get off work and enjoy the outdoors in a variety of ways.
In Christianity, the celebration of Easter Monday has its roots in the Bible in Matthew 28, in which Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James, are greeted by the risen Christ after discovering his empty tomb. Though frightened, they are overjoyed and love it, and go tell the others about it. In this sense, Easter Monday is also seen as a time of post-resurrection worship and jubilation and originally also included the entire post-Easter week. In secular life, the holiday has its roots in various pagan rites depending on the area, most of which revolve around the celebration of spring. Easter eggs and egg rolling contests most likely come from these origins.
While Easter Monday is not widely recognized across the United States, some areas of the country still observe it. The day is an unofficial holiday in North Dakota, where children are out of school, and the White House holds an egg-throwing contest every year in Washington DC that is combined with other outdoor parties. Egg rolling contests are also common in other various European countries, such as England, Germany and Denmark.
Dyngus Day is a specific form of Easter Monday observance and is mainly celebrated in the Czech Republic and Poland or Polish-influenced areas. In the Dyngus Day ritual, little boys often drench girls with buckets of water, sometimes early in the morning to wake them up, and poke their legs with small twigs or pieces of willow. In the past, this practice has been associated with marriage, where girls who received the soak and thrash were considered the most likely to marry. Subsequent shootings of the ritual, such as in the U.S. cities of Buffalo and Chicago, have modified it to become a general squirt gun holiday. Dyngus Day may have originated from a combination of pagan and Christian influences: water may be rooted in baptism or the pagan practice of purifying oneself by immersing oneself in water or whipping oneself with twigs.
In other areas, Easter Monday is simply a public holiday, such as Canada, Guyana, England and the Netherlands. Families will take the opportunity to relax and participate in various outdoor activities such as hiking, kite flying or cycling. In Leicestershire, England, people participate in bottle kicking matches, and those in the Netherlands sometimes start the day with a festive breakfast.
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