Boys, don’t do this at home. On Easter Monday, at around 5 a.m., the men creep through a neighbour’s window or chimney, often with the collusion of the male family head, into the rooms where the sleeping womenfolk are abruptly awakened by being doused with water. The girls, naturally enough, reciprocate in kind. In cities, where people are refined and perhaps girls more aware, this custom tends to be practised by the use of a sprinkle of water or cologne.

What does ‘Dingus’ mean?

According to A Gloger’s 19^th-century Encyklopedia Staropolska, the name for this day can be traced back to a medieval form of the word dingnus, meaning ‘worthy, proper, or suitable’, and perhaps the German usage of dingen, ‘to come to an agreement, evaluate or buy back’ – there is an association here with the German word dingeier, meaning ‘the eggs which are owing’.

The arrival of Christianity in Poland had a profound effect on this nation that is still overwhelmingly Catholic, and in the first millennium, baptisms were celebrated exclusively during Eastertide, particularly on Holy Saturday and the Octave of Easter.

Baptism and other sprinkling or drenching rites pre-date Christianity and were known in many cultures and religions such as those of Isis and Mithras – even Halloween’s apple bobbing, it has been suggested, might echo ancient Celtic pagan water rites. The early Christian Church Father, Tertullian (born in Carthage about 160 CE), wrote:

[Non-Christians] ascribe to their idols the imbuing of waters with the self-same efficacy [of purification] ... For washing is the channel through which they are initiated into some sacred rites – of some notorious Isis or Mithras ...

Moreover, by carrying water around, and sprinkling it, they everywhere expiate country-seats, houses, temples, and whole cities: at all events, at the Apollinarian and Eleusinian games they are baptised; and they presume that the effect of their doing that is their regeneration and the remission of the penalties due to their perjuries.

Among the ancients, again, whoever had defiled himself with murder, was wont to go in quest of purifying waters.
Tertullian, On Baptism, Ch. 5

Easter Monday elsewhere

In Hungary, today is called Husvét Hetfoje or Vizbeveto (‘Water Plunge Monday’). Young men would splash girls with water in streams and fountains. In return, as a ransom, the maids gave the boys coloured eggs, and on the Tuesday, drenched the boys as well.

In merrie olde England, men and women indulged in the ancient custom of ‘lifting’ or ‘heaving’. On Easter Monday, in places like Lancashire, Cheshire, Staffordshire and Warwickshire, men lifted the women into the air and carried them a distance. On the Tuesday, the women would retaliate by doing the same. It is believed by some scholars that the original meaning of the game was to represent the resurrection of Christ, though some suggest it might be to do with ‘raising’ the crops in Springtime.

In Italy, Easter Monday is La Pasquetta, Little Easter, a day for picnicking, enjoying delicious traditional Italian fare such as a antipasto of a hard-boiled egg with salt and local bitter herbs such as radicchio, aurugula or fennel.

The people of the Czech republic celebrate Velikonocni Pondeli or Pomlazka today. Like their Polish counterparts, boys wove willow or birch branches into small whips called dynovacka, which they decorated with ribbons and flowers. With these they struck girls on the legs, and the girls had to hand over decorated eggs in order to stop them. 

In 18^th-century Birmingham, England, children of the charity schools flocked to their church, where the first comers stood hand in hand, backs to building. There they were joined by their companions, till they had the church surrounded. As soon as the hand of the last touched the hand of the first, the party broke up and walked to the town's only other church, and the ceremony was repeated.

In Hallaton, Leicestershire, England, today’s the day for the big Hare Pie Scramble and Bottle Kicking. In time immemorial, a woman was saved from a charging bull when a hare ran across the path of the angry beast. She thanked the hare by killing it and making a hare pie which she shared with the locals. Now the hare pie is made with beef, but it’s still given to the locals; in fact, it is scattered over Hare-Pie Bank and the locals fight over it. Following this, there is a football match between the two parishes of Hallaton and Melbourne, using three small beer barrels instead of balls.

Whatever you do with this day, seize it!

It is the universal custom, among the common masses as well as among the distinguished, for men to soak the women on Easter Monday. On Tuesday, and every day thereafter until the time of the Green Holidays – Pentecost – the women doused the men.
The first recorded Polish writing on Dyngus Day; a medieval Polish historian wrote of what he termed the Oblewania