meanwhile in Poland – All Saints’ Day (01.11) and tomorrow’s All Souls’ Day (02.11) bring millions of Poles to cemeteries

https://i.redd.it/sphz5qzssoyf1.jpeg

by Realistic-Berry_888

23 comments

  2. Yay! A backwards tradition to because “lights” look pretty at night.

    Millions drive their cars to overcrowded cemeteries, idling in traffic jams for hours to “honor the dead” by burning fossil fuels, clogging small towns, and coating the air in exhaust.

    Then come the mountains of candles: cheap paraffin (a petroleum product) in plastic casings that melt into toxic sludge. The glass ones? Most can’t be recycled because of mixed materials or leftover wax. By the next morning, cemeteries look like landfills glowing in orange shame. See here: [https://gal.pless.pl/ib/c5bb83b4be368dcc31b3688e45b1fa69/z9/2021/2021-01-26-1/slides/wysypisko_na_cmentarzu_wszystkich_swietych_cf5b.jpg](https://gal.pless.pl/ib/c5bb83b4be368dcc31b3688e45b1fa69/z9/2021/2021-01-26-1/slides/wysypisko_na_cmentarzu_wszystkich_swietych_cf5b.jpg)

    We tell ourselves it’s “tradition”, but in reality, it’s mass consumer theater a competition over whose relatives “shine” the brightest.

    100k Tons of Trash created in One Day!

  3. Great to see this!!!

    People will celebrate Christmas and Easter when you get presents and eat food, but then completely ignore All Saint’s Day when we should remember our loved ones who are no longer with us.

  4. they’re gonna need to make a polish version of Coco so I can understand this.

  5. That’s a very Catholic thing I think Italians do this too. In the mixed atheist/protestant circles I grew up in, ‘All Saints’ and ‘All Souls’ are just meaningless words on the calendar.

  6. Same here, except for the “millions” part, since there is only two million of us. We are at the top when it comes to candles (for cemetaries) per capita in Europe.

    There were many initiatives to reduce candle consumption, replace them with solar powered ones, etc. but we still produce too much trash when it comes to the Day of the Dead (1.11.).

    Edit: Here, the Day of the Dead (or Memorial Day, literal translation from Slovene: “Day of Remembering the Dead”) is the same as All Saints’ Day, with the difference being secular vs. christian. It’s not just religious christians who practice this.

  8. Nice. In contrast to what some in the comments believe, this is also a common tradition in at least some traditionally protestant Christian countries, although the day can vary between All Saint’s or All Soul’s Day (in Sweden it started with All Soul’s Day, but has shifted to All Saint’s Day).

  9. I have to say I really enjoy seeing cultures in general maintain their cool traditions, but personally I always hated the All Saints Day. The atmosphere was always so somber, cold and sad, I absolutely loathed it as a kid and the feeling stayed with me well into adulthood.

  10. Today in Serbia were Zadušnice, same as yours Zaduszki tomorrow, on that day entire families visit cemeteries and graves of deceased close people. Every time i’m amazed how close Polish and Serbian language are, we have many common words.

  11. Electric lights, very environmentally friendly, good to see that.

  13. Nov 1, and Nov 2, in Mexico is dia de los muertos, “Day of the Dead”, where they honor their dead ancestors, kinda like our Memorial Day.

  15. It’s a thing in catholic parts of Germany, too. Families go to church and afterwards to the cemetery and commemorate their deceased loved ones. Tbf, nowadays many families skip church, but still go to the cemetery and light a candle.

  18. For a moment I was sure, that’s a cities skylines screenshot

  19. That’s a tradition in all the Catholic world, not Only in Poland though.

  20. This holiday has a pre-christian origin. It was called dziady and the Idea was that on this day spirits were very active and with the help of a shaman called “wieszcz” ritiuals were performed together with food prepared for wandering spirits.

    There’re few creepypastas with dziady gone wrong.

  21. Thanks for sharing! I love these kinds of posts, where I can learn about other cultures.

  22. Same thing in Croatia. Even tho I’m atheist, I still find the tradition nice. 

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