It was a phrase that made people turn and look at me strangely. Although that might have been a more common occurrence than I’d like to remember.

I’d wish my friends at school “Happy Dyngus Day” and the word made them giggle and lead them to ask “what’s that?”

I’d sigh and try to explain it, but I really couldn’t. Also, I didn’t know at the time it dates back to a pre-Christian springtime fertility rite and then evolved after the first Polish King was baptized in the 900s ushering Christianity into Poland. But even if I did, that would only cause more confusion in my junior high set.

We didn’t really celebrate Dyngus Day anyway. It was something we’d say to each other and my Grandmother would listen to polkas and tell stories about when she was younger. She was a sticker for her traditions as well. Forget what other people might tell you. Here is the dating rite of Dyngus Day — girls throw water on the boys they like and boys swat the girls they like on the back of the legs with pussy willow branches.

There is also polka music, beer, and the continuation of eating too much pierogi, kielbasa, and other forms of fat and sugar.

The tradition evolved in Buffalo, now apparently home to the largest Dyngus Day celebration in the U.S.. There are parties all over the city, in places that don’t normally draw crowds anymore but that families look at with pride in their Polish-American roots.

With the celebrations are silent this year, it gives me a chance to pause and think about my Grandmother — her smile, her love of music and dancing, her love of being the hostess in order to have everyone around her.

And the trouble she had as a child.

A few years ago, when my mom and I were making our annual Holy Week trip to the Broadway Market, we took a short detour and drove down the neighborhood where my Grandmother grew up. They moved a lot around this four-block radius because her father would always be unable to pay the rent. The joke was that he would cash his paycheck each week at one of the many local bars and drink away the family’s money.

Gram once told a story about her mother. Her mom was doing the weekly ironing, maneuvering the heavy iron over the clothes with her purse hanging in the crook of her elbow.

“Why are you ironing with your purse?” Gram asked her mother.

“So your father doesn’t go in and steal any money,” was the reply.

The stories were entertaining, which made us laugh a little bit. But now, I carry a little more solemnity as I think about those stories from old Polonia. Those experiences shaped her world view in ways I can only guess by playing one of my favorite games: Armchair Oprah.

Fights in her family were something fierce. No one could hold a grudge better than her, unless it was her older sister who would insist she was the one who could hold a grudge better.

But there was a flip side to all that negativity which included, but was not limited to, lying, stealing, misappropriation of family funds, mental and emotional abuse, physical abuse, along with personal slights of all kinds.

There was also a fierce love and loyalty that grew out of that.

Gram could hold a grudge fiercely, but she could love just as fiercely. Sometimes the love was more suffocating than the grudge. It was imperfect. But it was real.

Easter is about joy and hope. Easter Monday, a.k.a. Dyngus Day, is an extension of the celebration. Easter is a season of living out joy and hope. And boy could I use some joy and hope these days.

In this opportunity to sit back and reflect, I see a small example from my Grandmother, that even in the hardest, darkest, and meanest of circumstances, there can be a reason to laugh, drink, and polka.