Masopust: the Pre-Lenten Carnival Season
Known in western Bohemia as Masopust and in much of Moravia as Fašank or Ostatky, the pre-Lenten carnival season runs from Three Kings Day (January 6) to Ash Wednesday. In Moravian villages, the period reaches its climax in the final three days before the Lenten fast, when masked processions called obchůzky move through every street demanding hospitality from each household.
The masks worn during Fašank vary by sub-region. In the Hornatko area around Velká nad Veličkou, the core characters are the straw bear (medvěd), the harlequin (harlekin), and the executioner. The bear is typically a young man bound in straw ropes and led on a chain; the symbolism relates to winter being dragged away. At each house, the bear performs for sausage, pastry, or cash. By the procession's end, the group has covered the entire village and collected enough food for a communal feast.
The Fašank custom in the Slovacko sub-region is more elaborate, involving a multi-day programme with a ceremonial burial of a double bass on the final Sunday. This mock funeral — in which the bass is formally interred to mark the end of the dance season — is unique to this corner of Moravia and has no direct parallel elsewhere in the Czech Republic.
Easter Week: Whips, Water, and Hand-Painted Eggs
Moravian Easter customs centre on two primary rituals: the male practice of ceremonially striking women's legs with a braided willow whip called a pomlázka on Easter Monday, and the female practice of dousing men with water as a counter-response. Both acts are understood as gestures of vigour, renewal, and good health rather than punishment; the willow symbolises the new growth of spring.
The eggs exchanged during these visits — called kraslice — are among the most technically refined expressions of Moravian folk art. The production techniques differ across sub-regions. In Slovacko, women use a wax-resist batik method called voskovice that requires multiple dyeing stages. In Wallachia, the preferred technique is scratch-engraving of a dyed surface. In the Hana region around Prostějov, eggs are painted with complex floral and geometric patterns using a goose-feather quill. Individual women carry the patterns of their family and village, and distinctive local vocabularies of motifs can be identified and dated.
Easter markets in Olomouc, Brno, and Uherské Hradiště serve as the largest point of public contact with this tradition. Since the 1990s, these markets have expanded significantly, but the eggs sold there by village craftswomen retain their regional specificity. A Slovacko kraslice looks categorically different from a Hana kraslice, and vendors rarely produce in styles outside their own background.
"The pomlázka ritual is not decorative. In its original context it was a genuine community health practice — the willow was believed to transfer vitality, and households that were skipped were considered unlucky." — Dr. Eva Procházková, Institute of Ethnology, Brno, cited in Národopisná revue (2019)
Jizda Kralu: the Ride of Kings in Vlcnov
The most internationally prominent of Moravia's spring ceremonies is the Jízda Králů — the Ride of Kings — held annually in the village of Vlčnov in the Uherské Hradiště district. In 2011, UNESCO added the Jizda Kralu to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, recognising both the ceremony itself and the community structures that sustain it.
The Ride takes place on the Sunday before Ascension Day (usually in May). A boy aged between ten and twelve is selected as the King. He is dressed in full female kroj from his village sub-region and placed on a white horse, holding a rose in his mouth — a detail that prevents him from speaking throughout the ceremony. The King must not dismount, eat, or remove the flower for the duration of the procession. Two guards flanking him on horseback are tasked with preventing any attempt to "capture" the King by participants from rival groups, a vestige of older competitive elements.
The procession moves through the village in a prescribed route, stopping at designated households where the King's heralds — verbíři — declaim improvised verse explaining why the King deserves hospitality. These verses are composed specifically for the event and reference local events, village personalities, and recent history. The verbal improvisation is considered as important as the visual spectacle and is a skill passed between generations of verbíři families.
Vlčnov is not the only village to maintain the tradition. Smaller versions exist in Hluk, Kunovice, and Skoronice, but Vlčnov's version is the largest and draws several thousand visitors each year. The village manages a careful tension between the event's community-internal character and its function as a cultural tourism attraction; entry to some parts of the ceremony remains restricted to village residents.
May Day Customs and the Maypole Tradition
On the night between April 30 and May 1, young men in Moravian villages erect a máj — a tall spruce or pine tree stripped of its branches except at the crown, decorated with ribbons and a bottle of spirits at the top. The tree is raised in front of the house of a girl the young man wishes to court. The taller and more decorated the máj, the more serious the intention.
In villages where the custom is still active, committees of older men supervise the erection and adjudicate on quality. The girl's family has until May 1 morning to decide whether to accept the máj (leaving it standing) or reject it (cutting it down). Cases of rejection are rare because they carry social consequences; the tradition functions partly as a community-sanctioned courtship announcement.
By the middle of May, attention shifts toward preparing summer festival costumes. Women and girls begin the multi-week process of assembling or refreshing their kroj in preparation for the Stráznice festival in late June, which is the main public presentation of spring-prepared costumes.
Last reviewed and updated: April 14, 2026