It’s Palm Sunday and Poles don’t mess around when it comes to palms. So as our friend Jeremiah Raible says – it’s time to get on our palm palms on. Before we go any further, this is the point where you abandon that mental image of large, green fronds. Polish palms have less leaf and more flare! There is a long tradition of creating bright and ornate palms here in Poland and in time it has grown into somewhat of a sport. The current record is a palm measuring 36 meters (that’s 118 feet for the metrically challenged). Palm building is not for the faint of heart or the butter fingered.

When we first moved to Włocławek, we found one of these festive palms tucked at the back of our closet. Having never seen one before we thought it was some kind of folksy feather duster. After a few dust-spreading swipes we concluded it was a sub-par cleaning tool and tossed it. It was only later that we learned that it had most likely been blessed by a priest and was considered very special by Catholics. We’re sorry. It’s a tradition quite different from our own but it does brighten up our current snowy Polish spring.