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The blessing of the basket is one of the essential Polish Easter traditions. People prepare the basket on Saturday morning before Easter. It contains colored eggs (hard boiled), which were painted by the family, bread, cake, salt, paper, and white sausages. During the day on Saturday, the family goes to Church to bless the basket called Swieconka. Everything in the basket has a symbolic meaning. The colored eggs symbolize the risen Christ, the bread and salt are a wish for good health and a successful life. The sausages are very important. They are a special kind, very tasty and, as an integral part of the Polish mode of life, express a wish for enough food and fertility during the coming spring--the beginning of a new life circuit.
The custom of coloring eggs for Easter is still observed. Eggs which are painted in one color are called "malowanki" or "kraszanki". If patterns are etched with a pointed instrument on top of the paint, the eggs are then called "skrobanki" or "rysowanki". Those eggs decorated with the use of treated wax are called "pisanki".
On Easter Sunday, the family sits down for breakfast together and before the meal is begun, the items in the basket that were blessed the day before are shared among family members. Each member receives a coloured egg, a piece of bread, cake, and sausage.
On Easter Monday there is a very ancient Easter tradition called "Smingus-Dyngus", a custom of pouring water on one another. In the morning when you wake up, you pour water into a bottle of some sort and squirt the people who are still sleeping. The lucky person is the who wakes up first, but eventually the other family members gain up on them as well. If it is a nice and warm day outside, the youth go outside and soak eachother as well as other people passing by.
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