I must have been born yesterday because I never saw a palm cross until this year. How did I get so old so fast? I suppose I'm as old as I think I am, I've just been wearing those blinders of self absorption all my life.
Or I guess I could blame my parents because they didn't take me to Sunday school when I was a kid, they were too disappointed in the church. Or maybe I should blame the nuns that traumatized my mother when she was a school girl. And who is responsible for them... Buddhists say that that which has no beginning and no end never existed in the first place. With that I let this chain of blame drop.
This week as I sat in the living room with convalescing children I often gazed out the window at this palm cross that hung on a door across the street. Though made from simple materials it had so much exuberance that even though far away I felt like it was right in the room with us.
Wikipedia has no entry for Palm Cross. From the little I've read I can only figure out that palm crosses mark Palm Sunday, a day when Jesus triumphantly rode into Jerusalem and was given a kingly welcome as people threw down coats and branches before his donkey to soften its path. So then why isn't it called Coat and Palm Sunday? For some reason the coat part seems to have become less important even though for the donkey it must have been more comfortable to step on a coat than a branch.
This procession is reenacted in some churches after which the palm crosses are gathered and burned. The ash is retained for Ash Wednesday of the following year. It is much more reasonable to burn palm fronds than coats so I suppose things have worked out for the best.
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