All Saints’ Day
Krakow, Poland
To be Polish is almost certainly to be Catholic.
To be Catholic means, among other things, following church traditions and one that happens every year on the first of November is honouring the deceased.
We took a chilly walk this morning and noticed that, despite it being Sunday, all the busses and trams were packed full of people clinging on to plastic bags crammed with chrysanthemums and candles. They were all on their way to the cemetery.
Yesterday everyone had been buying…
We waited until after dark to take our own walk across town to see the lights in the cemetery, bundled up against the temperature dropping below zero for the first time since Moscow in the spring.
The biggest collection of candles was by the memorial for the victims of communism.
The heat from them was enough to warm our freezing fingertips!
Jgirl15 is developing an eye for a good picture…. as well as the top couple above, the following are all hers – not bad without a tripod in the dim light and shivering with cold:
PS Our personal saint today was Kboy12, who for the first time cooked the entire dinner on his own (chicken curry, rice and tomato salad). He was chiding himself that his older brother had been the family’s Curry King for three years by the same age, but I reminded him that some people in their twenties, who we have met recently, confided they do not know how to cook and are just now learning how to clean!
Tags: 2008/09, God, postcard: Poland, tradition
rayres
Oh my goodness, how beautiful! [I have a thing for cemeteries – so cemeteries with lanterns everywhere? I’m getting excited]
Hi there – same tradition in France where 1st November is a public holiday. The roads are full of people returning to their birth towns and villages where they too visit cemeteries with chrysanthemums. (Not sure where the tradition originated as chrysanths are not a European flower.)
We buy ours at a local nursery which, at this time, is absolutely full of the plants, just bursting into bloom. We are always stunned by their quality and take ages to select one.
Now it makes sense! Whilst in Germany I noticed on a particular day in Bavaria that there were people going to the cemetery nearby and had flowers etc etc. It must have been 1 Nov! The penny drops. I never knew that before. Fabulous photos by the way, and is the chicken cuury recipe a family secret???