Here’s one of my favorite teaching memories.
The year was 2005.
It was either the Tuesday or Wednesday after Easter weekend.
Back then, I was a travelling teacher.
Every day, the language agency I worked for sent me to different companies around Prague.
On this day, I was in a conference room standing in front of a group of very serious IT men.
I started the class, as usual, with an easy warm-up question:
“What did you do this weekend?”
And a very-serious IT guy told me:
“I beat my wife… I beat my mother…. I beat my grandmother… “
“Well, that’s odd,” I thought.
Later, I found out this is a Czech Easter tradition.
First of all, Easter in the Czech Republic falls on a Monday (in the US and UK Easter is on Sunday).
And every year on this day, Czech men take a small stick called a pomlazka and lightly hit the women in their house or village with it.
While they’re hitting their women with the stick, they say a special poem.
They do this till the women give them an egg or a shot of alcohol.
Where I come from (the U.S.), corporations like Google and Facebook tend to wish their customers “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”
And Disneyland now tells their employees not to use the words “boys and girls.”
They say they don’t want to offend anyone.
I think this Czech tradition would give these sensitive adults a heartattack.
That’s why I love it!
But this Easter Monday, I find myself far from Prague, in sunny Mexico.
Do the Mexican women on the beach know about my favorite holiday?
Hmm.
I bet not.
And I don’t think I want to find out.