"You can never throw away palms, you can only burn them," I said to Mike as we walked to church. "I wonder how that works."
"You bring them to the parish office," Mike said.
"Really?" I asked.
"I don't know," he shrugged. "But they make the Ash Wednesday ashes out of the palms, so they must collect them somehow."
"But you never hear about a big palm collection," I said. "You can bury an American flag, at least. But you can't bury a palm."
"You can't bury a flag," Mike said, "there's this big ceremony for flags. I've been to one."
"I'm pretty sure it's okay to just bury it too. But you can't ever just bury a palm," I said.
Sure enough, we went to church and a little kid handed us each a palm. But then Mike's palm cracked into two separate fronds, so we had three.
After Mass we walked home and I said, "I think you can fold the palms into crosses. Maybe I'll Google palm origami when we get home and turn them into crosses."
So I did.
Two of the crosses came out good, but one was very lopsided. It was just very resistant to folding. I thought about putting a dot of hot glue on the back to hold it together, but I don't think you're supposed to hot glue holy objects.
So now I have three palm crosses. I suppose I'll hang one in Philo's room, and put another on a shelf in the living room. I also read that palms can be burned during storms while you pray for protection, so I guess the lopsided cross and the old palms will go into a box to be saved for that.
Next winter I'm going to see about giving them to someone to be burned. I feel bad about constantly hoarding my palms.
