As many of you will know, Poland is a country with a huge emphasis on its Catholic heritage. I enjoy looking at the church buildings, many of which are historic and extraordinarily beautiful but, as a dirty heathen, I have difficulty listening to the church and their general hypocrisy about so much, not to mention their vast hoarding of wealth while many of their parishioners are relatively poor. But the 1st of November is a church occasion which, since living here, I have always been fascinated by and have a lot of time for.
All Saints’ day, in the church calendar is the day dedicated to all the lesser saints who don’t have their own saint’s day, as well as all the major saints, but in Poland, this public holiday is used by the people to visit the graves of their family – and even ancestors and to light candles, lay flowers and dedicate a small amount of their time to giving some thought to lost loved ones.
What I find particularly interesting about this is the increasing number of atheists I know in Poland who will still go to the graveyards on this day and participate in this ritual. And that’s where it is something that I can get on board with. Naturally, in the graveyards themselves there is a huge amount of Catholic paraphernalia, such as crosses, images of the Holy Mother, of JC and so on. But the focus here is very much on remembering the people who have left their lives, rather than on faith as such. It’s something that, growing up in the UK, I never really thought that much about. I’ve lost older relatives – indeed 2 great great aunts who were really instrumental in my childhood died when I was quite young and, while I often think about these people, it strikes me that it might be a nice thing to have a day set aside when you can really give over a small amount of time to remember them.
Quite apart from the sentiment, the sight of hundreds – even thousands – of candles burning throughout great necropolises as night falls is a beautiful sight. If you’re ever in Poland on the 1st November, it’s something that’s really worth seeing.
A City Called Bydgoszcz 