Blessings to You on Palm Sunday

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Today is Palm Sunday which surprised me because I always get surprised when Easter arrives in March and in this case on March 31 which is next Sunday. Palm Sunday is celebrated around the world on the Sunday before Easter and commemorates the triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem. Having gone to a Lutheran private school and also being taught religion at my Latvian school on Saturdays all the religious holidays have stayed on my mind. I remember as a little girl going to church in the early morning with my parents on Palm Sunday and Easter. For a little girl, I was a bit confused. The Latvian Lutheran church taught us this was Pupolu Svetdiena in Latvian or Pu—ywillow Sunday in English. That is what this Sunday is referred to anywhere Latvian in spoken particularly in Latvia. You see Latvia cannot offer people the traditional palm tree branches because there are no palms but with the coming of spring, there are plenty of lovely pu—ywillows (the site does not consider the actual name of these as proper). At our house in Riga, Latvia we always had a vase full of these delightful branches with their soft white blooms. I found this memorable photo of Martin sitting at a table at the Open-Air Museum we would go to where they held events on holidays and in front of him is a vase with these branches as you can see just beginning to bloom in the spring.