What do we know about Easter Monday….?

Throughout history Easter has been the most solemn time of the Christian calendar, a time when sorrow and death are vanquished by triumph and life, of Christ rising from the tomb and ascending to Heaven. But in these more profane modern times, the sacred side of the great festival has been rather pushed aside by our less than devout obsession with having fun, eating too many chocolate eggs, playing games and sports and generally have a good time. Religion? What’s that? I hope the above illustration shows the awkward  juxtaposition of two such different matters.

Well, knowing I was going to write an article to be published on Easter Monday, I took myself off to seek more information, and happened upon this site where I learned that “….Easter Monday is the Monday following Easter Sunday….Other believers know this day as Bright Monday, Dyngus Day, Wet Monday, or Renewal Monday. Catholics call it Monday of the Angel. People from South America and Europe know this day as Little Easter….” The words in bold are my doing because I want to show how many different names I’ve found for Easter Monday. I know it isn’t a complete list, only what I’ve totted up.

Let’s start with Dyngus Day. Hm. Well, my acquaintance with the word—as dingus—started in 1960s Germany, when it meant the equivalent of a thingummy, thingummajig or thingummybob (various spellings). And when I look in Merriam Webster today I find:-

din·gus noun\ˈdiŋ(g)əs – inflected form(s): plural -es. 1: something (such as a gadget) whose common name is unknown or forgotten<various slides and clips that replaced the tiepin of yesteryear are in turn being replaced … by a new sort of dingus adapted from army insignia — New Yorker><the bell-shaped dingus on the end of an old electric-light cord — G. C. Furnas> and 2. Usually vulgar: Penis.

Usually vulgar? I’ll say! But even in the first meaning I can’t see why dyngus/dingus would be attached to Easter Monday. Or why Wet Monday should either, come to that. What if the spring sunshine shone brightly all day, from a clear blue sky? Or does “Wet” meaning something else too? I’m not going to risk referring to Merriam Webster.

In eastern Christian churches it seems the day is called Bright Monday or Renewal Monday. That’s two ticks for Renewal Monday. It seems that the whole week after Easter Sunday is called Bright Week, of which I have never heard before. Here in the west, in the medieval period the entire week after Easter Sunday used to be celebrated, as in Bright Week for today’s eastern churches, but for us it was reduced in the 19^th century to just Easter Monday, the day after Easter Sunday.

My understanding of the Easter period has always been that Holy Week and Lent end together at sunset on Holy Saturday. This is when the Easter Vigil is celebrated, culminating in the lighting of the paschal candle at midnight, signifying that Christ has risen and it’s now Easter Sunday. And now the Easter Octave commences, to end on the second Sunday after.

 Easter, especially the vigil, is the holiest festival of the Christian church, and to witness the lighting of the candle is a profound experience, even if only seen on television, as I did recently when a Channel 5 documentary series about Westminster Abbey was broadcast. The occasion was so beautiful and filled with emotion that I do not know how anyone could fail to be moved.

There’s apparently nothing in the Bible specifying Easter Monday (under whatever name), it’s simply the day after the resurrection of Christ. I have to confess that I have never read the Bible from cover to cover, so I’m taking other people’s word for this. Nor does anything in the Bible tell us how the day should be celebrated. Easter Monday has just evolved and in the United Kingdom is also celebrated as a Bank Holiday. So here it’s very welcome indeed to all working people, no matter what their beliefs, but for Christians, of course, it’s also part of the holiest time of the year.

The nicknames mentioned in the opening paragraph above are only a selection—and when I looked in my books on English folk customs, superstitions and beliefs, I soon found more.

The Encyclopaedia of Superstitions by Edwin and Mona A. Radford only deals with Easter in general, and Easter eggs. Incidentally, Easter eggs are for Easter Monday, not any old time over the Easter period as seems to be the case today.

A Dictionary of British Folk Customs by Christina Hole dwells much more on the subject of Easter, with very interesting sections on eggs, games, hare customs and Easter lifting or heaving. The hare traditions are not to our modern sensitivities, involving hunting the poor creatures on Easter Monday, so I’ll gloss over them. But not before wondering if this is why medieval hares fought back so valiantly! They seem to have been a monstrous long-eared army! 😄

Anyway, to continue, in Hole’s excellent book I found that in Oxfordshire older people sometimes refer to the day as Ball Monday, because (you’ve guessed it) so many ball games were played then. In Poland on Easter Monday they played egg-shackling (which is mainly found in the north of England) on what they call Dingus (Ha!) or Smigus. There Easter Monday is also called Ducking Monday. In Hungary too it’s Ducking Monday. In the UK and Switzerland there is egg-rolling, which can take place on Easter Sunday or Monday. At Avenham Park, Preston in Lancashire. people gather on Easter Monday to roll eggs down a steep grassy hillside toward the river Ribble.

Egg rolling has also crossed the Atlantic, and at the White House on Easter Monday there are an estimated 100,000 eggs rolled. Really? Seems a gigantic number to me! Perhaps it should read 100,000 have been rolled there, i.e. over the years? Or am I being a Little Islander Briton? 😄

In Wales, at Whitchurch near Cardiff, there used to be a rather peculiar Easter Monday tradition involving childless married women going to the churchyard taking with her twenty-four tennis balls. Twelve were white, and twelve covered in black leather. She threw them over the church so that people waiting on the other side could rush to retrieve them. The women’s arms must have ached by the time they’d hurled all twenty-four! It seems to have been a “must do” custom that continued yearly until a woman had a child. At which she presumably dropped out, while other childless women continued the tradition. I confess to not quite “getting” this one, and Christina Hole hazards that it developed from an ancient fertility rite.

Now, Easter Lifting or Heaving was a custom along both sides of the Welsh marches, and in northwest England. On Easter Mondays young men carried a chair decorated with greenery, ribbons and flowers around to the houses of the women (of all ages). The ladies sat in the chair in turn and were heaved up and down three times. The young men were then granted a kiss or some other small reward. And should you think this was sexist, let me add that on the Tuesday it was the other way around, and the ladies carried the chair. The whole thing could, of course, become rather boisterous.

According to Martyn Whittock in his Life in the Middle Ages, Easter Monday was the time of local feasts called “church ales”. Money was collected for parish funds to support the poor. It was an occasion to bring out the wassail cup of Christmas, and sometimes the Lord of Misrule as well. These festivities could go on right until Hocktide, which fell on the second Monday and Tuesday after Easter.

In A Dictionary of Superstitions, edited by Iona Opie and Moira Tatem, I find what seems to be the origin of the Renewal Monday mentioned in the first paragraph above. Going back to at least 1596, Easter Monday was the day for wearing new clothes. Everyone had to sport at least something that was new. To show my age, I have to admit to remembering this tradition when I was young. My Welsh grandmother always wore some new item on Easter Monday, and saw to it that I did too, sometimes a pair of socks she’d knitted or gloves she’d crocheted.

Counting the names in bold above, I think I’ve found ten variations including Easter Monday itself. So there you have it. I know I have only covered a small part of what Easter Monday can mean, and how it is celebrated, but I will finish now with an illustration of a game that belonged to Easter in general, so presumably to Easter Monday as well. Ah, simple pleasures….