I meant to blog this right after Easter, but it slipped through the cracks. I did still want to share it with you. I read this survey, Czechs regard Easter as a symbol of spring, from the Czech News Agency, and found it very interesting. Here are two quick portions of the article, that I thought you might find interesting:
Czechs consider Easter rather the symbol of spring than a significant Christian holiday, according to a poll conducted by the Median agency for the daily Lidove noviny (LN) and released in its issue Saturday.
Over 60 percent of them connect the holiday with the Easter whipping of girls with a birch switch, and slightly fewer people connect Easter with decorating eggs. {to read more about Czech Easter custums, i.e. whipping girls with a birch switch, click here.}
Most of the survey wasn’t ground shaking for me, but confirmed what I thought was the case. I do, however, find it interesting that even in a country that claims to be around 90% atheist, there is still a “fairly” (is this word is relative) large majority of people who still connect the holiday with some religious significance. That is somewhat encouraging, I guess. Needless to say, while reading this, I realized I have a measure of job security as I read the results! Much work and love to be done here!