Today is
Palm Sunday. The Christian community
celebrates the entry of Christ in Jerusalem. It is an old custom in some regions
of the Netherlands for the children to participate in a procession with a homemade Palm Sunday pole.
My daughters have been attending the Waldorf school in their childhood, were this custom also was
being kept alive.
Of course we’re not making the entire pole any more but the rooster
on top is so delicious, we kept the baking of this rooster as a family tradition for Palm Sunday.
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| An example of the Palm Sunday pole |
Although
the church has attached their own interpretation to the symbols of this pole (as
they have done with many customs of the our holidays), I’d rather see this as the
a version of the May Pole which is a kind of fertility pole. This type of maypole originates
from the Germanic custom to carry around a decorated pine with a rooster on top
which was the rooster Gullinkambi (Old Norse for Golden Comb) The Rooster is a
symbol for the coming of the light which he announces every morning. The pine was a symbol for Yggdrasil, the world
tree.
The
habit of using bread in the shape of an animal dates back to the period in
which they no longer sacrificed
real wild animals.
After this small dilatation I just wanted to
share we had a lot of fun with the baking and shaping of our rooster. My son in law thought it looked
more like a dragon than a rooster but it tasted wonderful J