There will be a Dyngus Day celebration today beginning at 5 p.m. at the Polish Falcons Nest #493 in Batavia.
There will be polish food served from 5 to 7 p.m. Dinner typically costs $5-8 and includes smoked polish sausage, hard-boiled eggs, pirogi and more. This is one of the rare times that the bar is open to public.
A DJ will play music from 7 to 11 p.m., including polish tunes, rock and whatever else people like.
The address us 123 South Swan St. Special Dyngus Day raffle tickets will be available for sale. For additional information call 343-0225.
Dyngus Day, or "Wet Monday," is celebrated on the Monday following Easter in many cultures embracing Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
Long ago in Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, the tradition included parents waking their boys and girls up early in the morning by pouring buckets of water over their heads and striking their legs with long thin switches of willow or birch.
According to the same uncited sources in Wikipedia, the tradition eventually changed into a courtship ritual, wherein boys would target girls they liked, sometimes being let in the house at night by the girl's mother to douse the sleeping maiden with water. Girls who didn't get drenched were considered unmarriagable, ugly ducklings.
Today, females are said to give as good as they get. So anyone can be soaked. You've been warned.
