| Marzanna sinking Do we have enough of winter? Well, I do! The weather can be quite nice recently, but I definitely don't want it to come back, at least not before December. And in Poland there's only one way to make sure that winter is gone. What do we do? It's pretty simple. We just burn and sink this... Marzanna, called also Mora, Morana or more Polish - Śmiertka and Śmiercicha, is an ancient slavic goddess of winter, death and nightmares. Or a demon, as some more catholic researchers prefer to call her. Our old chronicler Jan Długosz dates this tradition to times of Mieszko I, the first official ruler of Poland, who opened the country for christianity in 966. Wikipedia says "The ritual represents the end of the dark days of winter, the victory over death, and the welcoming of the spring rebirth." But that's only half of the truth. During the winter, our folks used to be very afraid of Marzanna, but as soon as the winter is finished, at the day of vernal equinox, we didn't have to worry about her, so we could finally get a revenge and torture her. So who do we exactly kill and how? Marzanna is a female straw effigy, dressed in rags or old (vintage) clothes, with colorful ribbons and traditional jewelry (czerwone korale!). And we used to sink it in the river or the lake. Depending on the local tradition, it was also burnt before that. Still, we had to be very careful, because whoever felt down with Marzanna, touch her when she's in the water or look back at her, would ... |
