Palm Sunday

Today was Palm Sunday, which meant that we were going to get some palms at church. This is always a little awkward for me because we have lots of palms already but few places to put them. Our cats are pretty adventurous and love to chew on palms so there are not that many places we can put them where the cats won't get to them. We already have two behind our cross in the living room, and more on a shelf waiting for me to hang another picture we can stick them behind.

"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.