The Day of the Dead

No this post isn't about a horror film I went to see but is in fact about a Polish national holiday! The first of November is the so called day of the dead because on this day Polish people visit the graves of their dead relatives and leave flowers and generally remember the dead. In fact this isn't exclusively a Polish event, it's a catholic event celebrated in other catholic countries, but Poland being a staunchly catholic country it is taken very seriously here.

My day of the dead started in frustrating fashion. Forgetting it was national holiday, I went to the local bakery to find it closed. In fact everything was closed. It was also the first day of a new law passed by the Polish government making it illegal to work on this day, unless you are self-employed.

In the course of the day I visited 3 cemeteries. Outside each cemetery the flower and candle sellers were doing good business as people bought items to leave on the graves of their relatives. Inside each cemetery it was hard to move due to the amount of people moving around and standing by graves. The best way to describe it is that it is like being at 200 funerals at the same time. It also has a funeral atmosphere about it, with many people wearing black and visibly emotional.

Cemetaries can tell you a lot about a town/country and it's people. The first, obvious thing that Polish cemetaries tell you is that Poland is very much a catholic country. Every grave without exception had a catholic cross on it. In one of the cemeteries a mass was being performed and the graves of the dead were being blessed. The second thing that cemeteries can tell you is the wealth and status of a person. There were graves that clearly belonged to wealthy people, with their big marble headstones, and those that clearly belonged to poor people, sometimes with just a wooden cross and some dirt.

For me the day was interesting and a bit of a novelty. I didn't know any of the people buried at any of the graves we visited and therefore had no reason to feel sad but i appreciate that for some people it is an important event and that for anyone wishing to know a little more about Poland it's a worthwhile exercise.