By Charly SHELTON

If any person on the street, be they Christian or other, was asked what the biggest Christian holiday is, many would answer “Christmas.” It gets the biggest media and commercial promotion, the largest celebration and the longest vacation from work. But Christmas was a lesser feast day during most of the last 2,000 years – it was not even an established holiday until the 4th Century and wasn’t widely accepted and celebrated until the end of the 8th Century. Even then it was not recognized as is today’s Christmas. It wasn’t until the 1840s that Christmas really came into its own.

For the first 800 years, it was all about Easter and commemorating the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which led to the founding of the faith. Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday following the full moon after the vernal equinox, and this year it lands on Sunday, April 21. Because Easter was such a big occasion in the early years of the church, it was expanded into a whole week of celebration and commemoration called Greater Week, or Holy Week. Although Holy Week doesn’t officially include Easter Sunday, it leads up to it and many churches combine the celebrations.

Holy Week begins on Palm Sunday, the Sunday prior to Easter Sunday, this year on April 14. This was the day of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem. As Jesus rode into town on a donkey, the gathered masses laid down palm fronds and cloaks ahead of Him as a sign of respect, and He was named King of the Jews. The Passover feast on the night of Maundy Thursday prior to Easter Sunday was the Last Supper.

To commemorate the end of Jesus’ journey, as Christianity’s traditions evolved congregants would hold palm fronds in church and lay them down before the procession of the cross into and out of the church. Depending on availability, date palm fronds were the official plant to use but, as they are not native to Western Europe, branches of whatever was at hand would be used as a substitute.

This tradition was first noted at the end of the 4th Century in Jerusalem as described in the travelogue account “Peregrinatio Etheriae” (“The Pilgrimage of Etheria”), and first reported in the west in the Bobbio Sacramentary from the 8th Century. Traditions differed across the Christian world with some more elaborate – like a procession between different churches to sanctify the palm fronds by reading the entirety of the Passion account – and others tamer. Today, the day is officially called Passion Sunday and palm fronds are still utilized, given to congregants who sanctify them through prayer and meditation. After the service, the palms are taken home as sacramentals – like a souvenir of the day with the grace of God on it – to be kept in the home until the following year when the fronds are burned to make the ashes for Ash Wednesday.

  Charly Shelton