In Lithuania the coming of Spring is signalled by the great St Casimir's Fair at the end of February when there is a huge craft fair, amongst other things selling verbas. These are arrangements of dried flowers on sticks, which range in height from a few inches to a full 2 metres. These days they range in colour from natural looking to distinctly artificial.
Here are some pictures borrowed from here:
It's the custom to take them to church on Palm Sunday (the Sunday before Easter) to be blessed, and then they retain the blessing in the home all year.
I haven't heard about this happening anywhere else so I was quite surprised when my sister arrived home with something similar and said that also in Slovenia people took them to church on Palm Sunday. I didn't manage to see any myself but there is a video here of them being sold in a market in Ljubljana. Here they are just called Palm Sunday bundles.
After lunch today (in the Turkish restaurant for a change) we went for a walk by the castle. Coming down the hill we met a church procession at the bottom of the hill. We stopped to watch. We tried to work out what it could be. The only customs I could remember from England were well dressing (no well in site) or beating the bounds (wrong time of year). So after a hymn and a couple of prayers in Slovene neither of us were any the wiser.
Then the procession walked up the hill led by the boy carrying the cross followed by two priests. One had something in his hand which he appeared to be waving. Thinking this must have some religious significance I looked more closely. However, it seemed it was merely a text message which he was replying to on his mobile phone as he walked along. Did he really have God's mobile phone number? Or was he telling his wife to get the lunch ready?
