Father Window

Jeff Taylor. Fot. Sławomir Ostrowski

Let’s say I’m talking with teenage students from Kaliningrad at a summer camp. The topic is what we believe in. UFOs? Some say Yes and some No. Ghosts? Most say No. God? Suprisingly for a former communist country where all religions were supressed for so long, many of the pupils reply, „Of course.”

Next on the list is Santa Claus. When they were younger, the kids believed in him or as they explained rather in Grandfather Frost. Then one girl said, „Father Window.”

Of course, she had meant to say „Father Winter.” Nevertheless I applauded her for the mistake because she spoke without thinking.

Fortunately this entry will not deal with teaching methods but instead with a holiday based on that girl’s wonderful error.

Easter is celebrated forty days after the first new moon of the new year or whenever the original pagan holiday occurred, but the week before there is the Feast of the Windows.

Preparations for Easter include cleaning the home. Not a normal Saturday-morning cleaning but a vigorous cleaning that will make your knuckles bleed. And a proper Easter cleaning is not complete without washing the windows. This tradition is the Feast of the Windows.

So in the days leading up to Easter all Poles must toil to make their homes spotless and most importantly the windows. There is no set date for the cleaning of the windows. It depends on how much snow there was during winter. The more snow there was the dirtier the windows will be, and washing them will have to be done earlier. So if it was a snowy winter then the windows will be cleaned two weeks earlier, but if not then techincally not util the Saturday before Easter.

Anyway, window cleaning is the worst Easter chore of them all. Nobody wants to do it, at least I don’t and never have. There has to be somebody to ensure that windows in Poland are properly washed. That is the role of Father Window encouraging all Poles to clean their windows extra hard so that they glisten like a million stars.

However, Father Window doesn’t hand out presents to good cleaners unlike Santa or the Easter Bunny. He just smashes all the dirty windows. Flying around Poland in the days before Easter he throws rocks/bricks/old Easter eggs at dirty windows. Extreme but effective.

(jtaylor/bsc)