All Saints' Day in Poland - Commemoration or Carnival?

True enough, funerals if nothing else are a great way to catch up with family and friends whom you may not have seen for years.

I actually ended up around a relatives house last night as a result of all saints day, it was a nice break from the norm.

For those of you guys who speak about cremation - it doesn't mean you don't land on a cemetery. In Poland, keeping ashes at home is illegal (at least it still has been last time I checked), and most likely so is disposing of them (correct me on that if I'm wrong), so basically the only difference is that you get to buy a cheaper coffin for burning, and spend the remaining money (or more) on an urn that, consequently, lands in a grave, on a cemetery, under a tombstone.

As for candy floss and toys... as long as you manage to get the permit (which by the way I'm almost sure those people did not bother to apply for), you are free to sell whatever you want wherever you want. It's the fact they actually have customers that I find funny - it's a very, very nice example of Polish catholic hypocrisy... but my little, condemned, pagan soul is pleased, as it means even after over a thousand of years of christian indoctrination, there's an undying spirit of Dziady left. Oh yes, give us some more time and freedom, and we'll move the feast back from our homes to the cemeteries...

...ok, that was a joke. But still, rather than disgusting, I find the whole situation kind of funny.

I visited 2 yesterday and I saw cheap light up toys outside the big cemetary in Olkusz. I was quite annoyed by it to be honest. But a few people said it was because young children quite often get bored visiting the cemetery and can be disruptive so this was to keep them amused. I am not totally into the idea though, I mean surely they are more disruptive if they have a light up wand or something??

Sounds reasonable, however, I doubt the vendors were thinking of the kids in anything but monetary terms.

I am sorry again. I admit I was wrong. I consulted a Warsaw friend of mine and he corroborated your news. My sincere apologies. Will you forgive me? :):):)

It seems that Warsaw is ahead of other cities to introduce fast food style in celebrating the holiday. Here, in Krakow, everything was traditional as usual.

Merged: 1st November vs. Halloween

As All Saints' Day is fast approaching, I was wondering how the PF regulars who live in Poland are experiencing these days. For me 1-2 November are always "magic" days. I know, I know, wrong expression...But there is something genuinely stirring in the way the Poles (and as I know the Czechs and Austrians do the same)are experiencing these days. The sight of the illuminated cemeteries at night is very moving.

We are not going to the in-laws this year, but we will be lying flowers and candles at the monument of the First Polish Armoured Division (General Maczek's boys) at Plac Inwalidów, and pray for them. It was their dust-ridden tanks which liberated my Flemish village in September 1944, and also my mother's hometown, Ghent.

That also counts for something I think, somehow.

As for Halloween, I see with distance & disgust how this Yankee contraception is taking over Poland as well. Sad...
No way we should bow to PIS martyrdom on such occasions, but Halloween is imported madness :)
Maybe I am just getting old :)

Halloween is one of the most ancient traditions of Europe, and has its roots a long way before America was even discovered, and shares a common root with the Polish tradition of Dziady.

The commercialism of Halloween is rather tasteless, much like the behaviour I witnessed that prompted this thread two years ago.

We weren't really very encouraged to do the american halloween candy thing much when i was a kid. i guess that's the thing about my folks, that they sort of drove the message home that it was somewhat a solemn time. it wasn't a time for frolick and greed with your friends, seeing who could collect the most candy. I didn't "get it" when I was a kid. i don't want to go into it but some of my folks family members don't have graves. even so, we are far from them. but even though my fams don't visit, there is still some reflection rather than merriment. I wish it were different but it is the quiet solemn reflection time for us in my family.

the custom around my area in nj is that a lof of folks put up solar lamps on the graves now. do you see those in poland?

Mexico does it big, too. Their Day of the Dead is full of cemetery picnics, skeleton dolls, sugar sculls and family retelling funny stories of the dead.

In honor of the dead children, the live ones dress up and get sweets given to them.
Their celebration is not as somber as the Polish one, and not as senseless as the American one.

I haven't seen it yet but it's probably only a matter of time, after I've seen singing lamps nothing will surprise me anymore - and they were singing this awful pop hit "Rise, see, you're not alone..." now, that was something.

I think I would be traumatized . . . lol

Poland can't hold a candle (no pun intended!) to Mexico's Dias de Muertos (Days of the Dead). There they sell cakes in the shape of skulls and various plastic toys, souvenirs and gadgets in the shape of coffins and skeletons. The religious celebrations take place amid a fiesta atmosphere, since life and death coexist side by side. Co kraj to obyczaj!

ehow.com/how_2064992_celebrate-all-saints-day-mexico.html

But you need a banquet to get you going. Even in secular Belgium people do not do not do that.

Halloween's where its at, All Soul's Day is boring as fuq in Poland. Standing round a graveyard in the cold.
You don't need to go to a shaggin graveyard to remember your dead loved one.
For me, it's just terribly fake. Why should one day be put aside to remember your dead loved ones? Why can't you just do it anytime?

Anyway, we all know that All Sain'ts/Soul's Day was stolen by the Christians from those party animal Celts who used to love to have a massive shindig on Halloween.

Mexico's Day of the Dead is unreal however, one experienced it once but it was fantastic, hey Polonius we actually agree one one thing finally :P

Way better than the miserable macabre pseudo grief that's served up here.

Plus who do ye go to the cemetery on the wrong day? November 1st is All Saint's Day, not the normal dead, November 2nd is All Soul's Day, surely that would be the proper day?