Reflecting on a Palm Sunday tradition
The official name the Church gives to Palm Sunday is “Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion.” It’s for obvious reasons: We distribute palms in commemoration of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem and we hear the Passion story read in the Gospel.
Growing up, it marked the beginning of several days of church-going … to services that seemed to last a very long time. I liked the procession with the palms, especially when, in California, they were huge fronds that had been trimmed from the palm trees around the church property: Green, alive and heavy!
But, what was most important to me was what happened on the afternoon of Palm Sunday. Our family would gather around the kitchen table and we began to make small crosses from the palm fronds. My mom was really good at making just the right size cuts for the second piece of palm to weave into the longer piece.
After making several crosses, they were placed carefully into the big, thick dictionary until they’d dried out for a couple of days. Then, each palm cross was placed in the Easter card given to grandparents, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters and parents on Easter morning.
I’m not certain how the tradition began. Was it an Italian custom? Or a Damiano tradition? No matter … it continues today.
Not an Easter goes by that I don’t send and receive a palm cross from a family member. My mom told me it was a sign of wishing Easter blessings on that person and their household.
I like it. It brings me comfort, solace, good memories.
By the way, as years went by, mom allowed me to graduate to making palm hearts! They’re a bit funky looking, but that didn’t matter then, nor does it now.
Blessings, peace and love to each of you this Holy Week. And, perhaps you’ll want to take up this tradition?
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Thank you for sharing your family’s Palm Sunday tradition, Paula. My mom saved the blessed palm and burned a bit of it over a candle during big storms. Now that I think of it, I might do the same. For stormy weather and bad mental weather, too.
What a rich family story about Palm Sunday. Thank you for sharing it with us.
Maybe u could teach us how to make the best cross using the palm.
What a beautiful tradition, Sister Paula! Thank you for sharing. I think we need your classroom instruction next year.
Thanks for sharing! I don’t know the correct way to make a palm cross but give it a try anyway. At least I know it is a cross!
A beautiful reflection on tradition – thank you for sharing it. I come from a family with a limited artistic imagination (!) and creating a cross is beyond my practical skills. Our tradition was and is to place the palm behind a crucifix or other sacred image and keep it there until the following year’s Ash Wednesday. Keeping our families’ traditions and their meanings for us is really a blessed gift, isn’t it?
Paula, In my mind’s eye, I can see Mary Damiamo creating and teaching not only a craft but a life lesson. Thank you! I have never seen or heard of a heart shaped palm. Beautiful!!
Paula, what a lovely memory for you!
I’ve made small wreaths and tied the ends together with narrow red ribbon. Then I put this over the crucifix in my bedroom.
The season of Lent has seemed to pass very quickly this year.
Blessed Holy Week!
Rita Clare
Hi Paula – Camille and I are thinking about you this Easter Season! We miss seeing you more regularly. We hope to visit this summer.
We love to make palm crosses too. Like Sr. Denise said palm hearts are new to me.
Peace and love.
Thanks for your reflection, Sister Paula! I was a product of All Saints in Hammond, taught by SPs, and trained well in music. I became a church musician for a Polish church in East Chicago, where the ladies of the choir would weave palms almost constantly on Palm Sunday. They taught me several times (and more than one year!) until I caught on, and now that the choir ladies are long gone, and I am in their age bracket (!!) I am passing my woven palms onto others while I sing in a parish choir here in Lansing, Illinois. I can do a cone, a leaf, and a rose, but never could master the cross, even though multiple examples and instructions are provided on line. From my years of teaching high school English, I met another teacher who taught religion, made a crown of thorns for me, and tied it with ribbon, but from all the looking at it, I never mastered that either. I weave and give away most of my woven palms, make them for multiple parishioners, and now have quite a few in a vase at home for the next year. It is a real joy to weave them, then pass them onto others.
Easter blessings to all!