Drown the witch!

Happy first day of Spring (yesterday)! The past week in Lublin has been beautiful with the sun actually out for more than an hour at a time. Our first three weeks here the sun shone for an average of probably five hours per week. It was a little discouraging. But with Spring in the air I'm hoping for more sunlight. I guess when you live in a place with so little winter sunlight you really appreciate Spring. And the Poles certainly do...although not in the way I would ever imagine.

An array of fresh flowers are sold across the street from my apartment
 every day--even in the Winter!

Apparently, on the first day of Spring, school children will make a doll out of rags and straw and such. This is not a take home and comb-her-hair type of doll. The doll's name is Marzanna. She represents the goddess of death, Winter, sickness, and cold. To celebrate the end of Winter, the doll is carried in a procession to a river.

There she is thrown in the river to drown.

(Sometimes, after she is lit on fire). 

And you can't look back at her.

Okay, that sounds a little dramatic. And I think it was, back in the day. Religious beliefs held this effigy-drowning ritual as sacred. Today the custom is much more lighthearted with games and competitions in school. Maybe next year I'll have enough Polish friends that I can find out the location of the drowning!

Are they drowning Marzanna too?