Varo pahaa taikaa!
The wildest nights of the year
Pääsiäisyö
Kohahti suuri, raikas yö:
Nyt, noidat, yöhön mustaan!
Jokainen kohti taivastaan
ja kohti kadotustaan!
Lehahti savupiippuihin väkevä tuuli, imi - ,
Hulmahti helma punainen,
ja tukka tuulta viistäen
lensimme taas -
oi ylistetty, ylistetty
pääsiäisen nimi! [...]
(Aale Tynni)
***
Between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, while Jesus is lying in his tomb, bad magic and witches run rampant in Finland and Sweden. I find this a fantastic example about how pagan traditions and Christian religion coexist.
To find out more about the history of the little witches that may appear at your doorstep, begging for Easter eggs, check out this article about Finnish Easter traditions. It tells us, among other things, that the witches were in fact old women who had sold themselves to the devil. The hours after Good Friday were crucial - if your cows got sick, it could just have been that witch from next door doing her bad tricks.
When I was a child, we didn't dress up as witches. In South Eastern Finland, a very different tradition existed for children around Eastertime. We decorated willow twigs with paper flowers and feathers, and walked around the village on Palm Sunday, tapping neighbours and relatives with our twigs, reciting a peculiar kind of Easter blessing and asking for a reward in the form of Easter eggs, sweets, apples, or even money. Sometimes we got our reward straight away, but usually we had to return on Easter Sunday to collect it. You'll find more about this tradition in the same article, and you can also read (if you must) about mämmi.
The willow blessing tradition is still going strong, but increasingly one finds that the two traditions are amalgamating. Now you have little witches walking around with decorated Pussy willows. The tradition lives and changes, the Orthodox Easter habits blend with the Western ones.
Witch with a broomstick and a cat is also a popular Easter decoration. The picture above could be an old, Finnish Easter greeting, but it isn't. It is magazine cover dating from October 1923, so this one must be a Halloween witch.
Comments - Kommentit
When I was little, I had a lot of fun at Easter-time with the Lutheran girls who lived up the street. In addition to baking goodies (there was a plaited sweet bread that was particularly delicious; you made it into a wreath and popped a nice coloured egg in the middle), they were busy for weeks, blowing eggs and decorating them in all sorts of ways... Painting them, patterning and dyeing them with wax and string and onion skins. Then on Easter morning, they'd wake up and find that they'd all been hung with ribbons on the tree in the middle of the front yard. Very pretty!
They moved back to Germany when I was twelve or thirteen, and the next people in the house chopped the tree down... but it grew back, green and lovely, in true Easter style!
Posted by: Angharad | April 15, 2006 06:52 PM
Oma noitatarinani on nyt nimilinkissäni.
Ja meillä kävi tänä vuonna muslimivirpojat :D
Posted by: Petja Jäppinen | April 15, 2006 07:58 PM
Decorating and colouring eggs for Easter was common e.g. in England during the Middle Ages. "King Edward ordered 450 eggs to be gold-leafed and coloured for Easter gifts in 1290."
http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/easter/easterday.htm
Decorated willow twigs were also common at least in Scandinavia. We Finns are so Medieval and so are the Russians when celebrating Easter.
Greek orthodox customs are accepted and loved as such by many Lutherans in Finland. We make pasha, we have icons and decorate for Easter in "a Russian way" - actually in an old European way.
Posted by: Anna Amnell | April 15, 2006 10:08 PM
I had forgotten how surprised we were five years ago when we encountered witches and broomsticks at Easter in Finland - quite new to English visitors who only knew them at Hallowe'en. The twigs decorated with feathers were most attractive but I hadn't realised the use to which they were put by the children. Thanks for another memory of five years ago, Anni.
Posted by: Marford | April 16, 2006 12:27 AM
Fascinating story, Anni.
It makes one think how much society at large is losing with Hollywood creating all the modern images for these kinds of rituals and festivals. In so doing, they are supplanting the more diverse, and more interesting ancient myths.
I liked Angharad's memories too.
Denis
Posted by: Denis | April 16, 2006 02:34 AM
Thanks for all the comments, especially Anna for the historical information and the link!
Petja added his contribution about the living and changing tradition: his home was visited this Palm Sunday by Muslim children with their decorated twigs. They of course have as good a reason to take part in Russian Orthodox Easter tradition as Lutherans do - children make religious tolerance look like the most simple thing in the world sometimes.
Petja, olinkin jo lukenut noitatarinasi. Hirveä ämmä sai ansionsa mukaan.
Posted by: Anni | April 16, 2006 08:56 AM
Itse olen sitä mieltä että hirveä ämmä sai ihan liikaa ja olin ilkeä, mutta toisaalta, minä tunnustan, täysin häpeämättömästi, nauttineeni tuosta tavattomasti. Toisesta, hieman tätä muistuttavasta tapauksesta, joka perustui silkkaan sattumaan, minä kertonen tällä viikolla ihmiskunnalle, samoin julkaisen tällä viikolla sivuillani kaksi kuvaa genitaaleista...
Posted by: Petja Jäppinen | April 18, 2006 06:27 AM
Petja, nyt vasta valkeni. Mietin tässä jo, että pitäisikö herätellä yleistä keskustelua siitä, millaisista aiheista perheblogeissa on kohteliasta keskustella. Mutta samalla vähän aavistelin, että joku älyllinen koukku tässä kuitenkin piilee. (Ja kun anoppi ei osaa suomea niin en oikeasti ollut kovin huolissani.) Olin kyllä käynyt katsomassa Saaran pääsiäisaiheista asetelmaa mutten ollut lukenut keskustelua loppuun saakka.
Toisin sanoen aiheutit minulle yllättävän paljon päänvaivaa tällä kommentilla.
Posted by: Anni | April 19, 2006 10:50 PM
Selitys kahteen edelliseen kommenttiin.
Posted by: Anni | April 20, 2006 11:06 AM