Every year on 1 November (All Saints' Day) millions of Poles visit cemeteries and light candles on the graves of their dead relatives and in places of special memory of people whose graves are far away.
All Saints' Day is a day when everybody gets thoughtful about things that are really important. Not about stupid jokes, not about work, not about career, not about money, not about hedonistic pleasures, but about life in general, about families, about relatives, about things that made us the people we are today.
Some people claim it's a sad day, but I totally disagree. It's a day when relatives meet together and never quarrel. It's a day to remember good things about people from our past. It's a day full of peace. Of course people who have recently lost a close person have a hard time, but they would have a hard time anyway.
I like to go to the biggest cemetery in the evening, when it's already dark, to see thousands of burning candles. Unforgettable feeling. On almost every grave there are several candles, and in places of special memory there hundreds of them.
Halloween is a disgrace compared to All Saints' Day in Poland.
Below there are some pictures I took today (on 1 November 2014). Unfortunately my camera is too weak and they are somewhat blurred.
The graves on the first picture are random – they are not graves of my relatives. The next pictures are from places of special memory. The words on the third picture are “TO VICTIMS OF WARS AND VIOLENCE”. On the fifth picture there are words “TO MEMORY OF DEPORTEES TO SIBERIA” and a map of Russia with marked places of forced labour camps where many Poles were deported. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybirak
(Saturday, 1 November 2014)
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