The Complete History of Dyngus Day

From the 900s in Poland all the way to 2025 in South Bend, Dyngus Day is here to stay

BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED MARCH 10, 2025

The Dyngus Day party usually ends at the Firefighters Local 362 with live music and a cash bar that stays busy all night long. Before that, it might be a late lunch at the West Side Democratic Club after an early breakfast at the Crumstown Conservation Club.

As for where the Dyngus Day party begins, that's a matter of some conjecture, but the best guess lands you in the year 966 A.D. with the baptism of Prince Mieszko I, historically considered the first ruler of the Polans people and the originator of the Polish state.

So before you start day drinking the morning after the Resurrection of Our Lord, let's go way back and let's uncover the complete history of a holiday that's celebrated with abandon across South Bend... and very few other places outside of Poland.

This is the complete history of Dyngus Day.

Mieszko I lived an early life shrouded in mystery and a later life filled in with Christian mythology. His birthdate is posited as being sometime between 922 and 945, and different origin stories claim that his name means confused one or a bear or one who has eyes closed. All three interpretations will play a role in our story before we're finished.

According to legend, Mieszko had been born blind; but miraculously gained his sight during his first haircut - a ritual then made special for Polish boys on their seventh birthday. Wise men around to witness the miracle interpreted it as allegory: In the same way that Miezsko had had his eyes opened, so too would the Poles. They foresaw that Mieszko would be the one to lead his people out of pagan darkness and into Christian light.

Mieszko ascended to the throne sometime around 960 and was anywhere between the ages of 15 and 38 when he did so. He launched into a series of wars and skirmishes that left him needing to find a way to make a peace with the Germans. That peace took the form of an arranged marriage with a German princess, but before that could be allowed, there was the matter of Mieszko's baptism... and the seven wives he already claimed for his own.

On Easter Monday in the year 966, Mieszko I and his entire court were baptized as Christians. He divorced his previous wives. He married his German princess. Work began in earnest - and not without resistance - to make Christians of his entire nation. A bishop was assigned to Poland, and churches began popping up across Mieszko's feudal lands.

Besides the obvious victory for the Christian faith, the years around Mieszko's baptism represent the earliest unification of the Polish state. Easter Monday would become a religious holiday and a national one. Sometime after that, it would become just a little bit silly, but then maybe it had been silly for a long time prior.

It wasn't until the 1300s that the Poles began commemorating the day of their founding father's baptism with a holiday called Śmigus-dyngus. Some of the traditions surrounding the holiday had roots in Mieszko's own mythology. There was the throwing of water, and in small towns across later medieval Poland, it wasn't uncommon for daylong water fights to break out among youngsters and adults alike. Buckets of water were tossed over buildings. Gangs of boys would jump out from around corners to splash unsuspecting womenfolk.

All of it, was of course, a throwback to the baptism of Mieszko I.

The tradition evolved and grew. Sometimes boys dressed in costumes, usually as bears, a callback to one of the possible interpretations of Mieszko's name. When things got out of hand, boys would gang up to toss local girls into lakes. I guess the symbolism depends on how you interpret the logistics behind a proper baptism.

Then there were other traditions, strange rituals that didn't seem to fit with the baptism narrative. There were local boys, armed with pussy willow branches, chasing around girls, and attempting to swat them on their thighs. In some places, it was custom to get a rooster drunk on vodka and then march around the town carrying the thing while it crowed loudly. There was even a bit of trick or treating around Śmigus-dyngus, gangs of fun-loving youths knocking on doors and demanding eggs.

These practices run all the way back to the years before Mieszko and before Poland, pagan springtime rituals designed to solicit fertility, part of Śmigus-dyngus for all the same reasons that Easter has a bunny and painted eggs.

During the coming centuries, lines would blur between the pagan traditions and the Christian ones, and the result was the kind of delightful mishmash that must have seemed massively confusing to outsiders. In some villages, it became customary to dress a local boy as a bear and then stage a mock drowning ceremony. Drowning the bear was said to encourage crops to grow and ensure a good harvest.

The American expression of Dyngus Day did not appear until 1915, and it started with traditions all its own, although not far from the holiday's original roots. In Buffalo, New York; young men marched in an Easter Parade carrying holiday eggs filled with her perfumed water. Not unlike a Christmas mistletoe, if he could successfully douse the target of his affection with water, he could kiss her.

The first mention of Dyngus Day in South Bend's English-speaking newspapers arrived in April 1949. At that time, the tradition in Polish neighborhoods was for children to pluck fresh twigs from blooming trees, then go door to door, swatting women on the legs and receiving eggs, cake, and candy in return.

The long history of Śmigus-dyngus had become part Easter, part Christmas, and part Halloween. For its next act, it would become part Mardi Gras.

Today's Dyngus Day has a set of customs and traditions all its own, which is why you'll spend yours drinking pilsners and eating sausage, instead of turning the hose on your neighbor when she goes to check the mail and then kissing her against her will.

In South Bend, Buffalo, Chicago, and very few other places across the United States, Dyngus Day has become the Polish version of St. Patrick's Day. It's a day to party and celebrate, a day when everyone can be Polish for 24 hours. If Fat Tuesday is the last day to enjoy everything that will be forbidden during Lent, then Dyngus Day is the first day to enjoy them all over again after the Time of Waiting is over.

It was 1956 when the West Side Democratic club decided that Dyngus Day in South Bend would be part party, part pilsner, part Polish pride, and part politics. That was the year they prepped 600 pounds of Polish sausage and unveiled the Democratic ticket while the gathered throngs came to eat it.

Since then, Dyngus Day has been as much a political occasion as much as it's been anything else. Mayors announce candidacies on Dyngus Day, and sometimes, national political figures make a visit to South Bend - including Bobby Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama.

In South Bend, Dyngus Day has become a beloved institution, one day out of all of them that just feels like it's ours. It started with a baptism, detoured through medieval water fights, and landed somewhere between a Polish feast and a political rally. Dyngus Day is proof that history is never boring - it just gets louder.

Long live Dyngus Day and may your pilsner glass never run dry.