And Also With You

Lent is now upon us. 

Having grown up in New York, I am used to certain things in the lead up to Easter and hadn't considered that things here might be different beyond what I noticed last year. As I wrote then, everything shuts down on Easter Weekend, and I now have time to make plans so that I won't get caught unprepared again. But as I am learning, there are different approaches to things here that I did not know about and I am finding them as interesting as I find everything else.

As Ash Wednesday was this past week, I was prepared to see signs of it everywhere. In New York, I recall seeing people who had gone to church in the morning and had ashes on their foreheads the remainder of the day. Given that most of the Polish population in Catholic, I expected to see the same and was surprised that I saw nobody at all with ashes visible. Thinking that maybe it was more common to go to church after work (I have often seen full churches for 6 PM masses here on weekdays), I was again surprised to see no indications on my walk home later that day. That night, I learned that the custom here is for ashes to be sprinkled in your hair at church rather than put on the forehead.

Having learned about this, I started asking questions about how customs differ here from the US and learned that there are quite a few. For example, I was the godfather in Catholic churches for three of my nieces and nephews despite not having attended church regularly for decades. I am told that here the godparents need to be approved in advance of a baptism, including documentation from your parish priest that you have received all the appropriate sacraments and attend are, as I put it, "in good standing".

I am told that children in Poland tend to receive their first communion at about age 10 while I recall having mine at about age eight. Similarly, I had my confirmation in eighth grade, when most of us were 13 years old and I am told confirmations here are more in the mid- to late-teens.

Another learning experience was being introduced to the tradition of "Tłusty Czwartek" or "Fat Thursday". In preparation for the normal fasting during Lent (no sweets or meat for forty days), on the Thursday before it is traditional to eat  pączki, or, as they are called where I come from, jelly doughnuts. As most of the people in my department at work are Polish, every single office in my part of the building had piles of them. This picture is a bit of an exaggeration of what it was like, but only a bit. 

Again, I was surprised about the no meat rule during the entirety of Lent. As I recall being taught, the prohibition was no meat on Fridays only and you normally choose something else to forego the duration. I don't know how well the "fasting" is adhered to here (it's not as if the numerous burger joints are empty), but I was surprised to learn that my Catholic education from many years ago was more lenient than the current teaching in Poland. 

Holidays are also skewed toward the religious. With respect to Easter itself, it is a four-day weekend as Good Friday and Easter Monday are both national holidays and many others are religious ones. While the American tradition of Halloween is making inroads here, All Souls Day on November 1 is a much bigger deal, with most businesses closed and special transportation service to accommodate an extraordinary volume of visitors to cemeteries. 

Not least worthy of mention is the John Paul II factor. The fact that a Polish priest became pope, lent the weight of his station to help nudge along the collapse of communism in Poland and later became a saint is of no small consequence here. Upon the collapse of communism most streets, buildings, airports, etc were renamed in honor of famous Poles and he is among the honorees. The street on which I live, formerly named after Julian Marchlewski, a noted communist, is now Aleja Jana Pawła II. The day of his canonization mass was also quite a big deal, with a jumbo screen in one of the big plazas broadcasting the proceeding from Rome and yellow and white flags, balloons and banners all over the city.  

I knew coming here that Poland is more homogeneous as to religion than the US is, but I continue to come upon aspects that take me by surprise. As a result, even seemingly ordinary things are a chance to learn and I kinda like that.

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On a separate note, maybe this place is blessed since the canonization. New York has been getting walloped with frigid weather and snow, while it has been relatively mild here and the dustings of snow have melted pretty quickly. I am not expecting it to be snow free from here on in, but so far so good.

So peace be with you....