Catholics honor All Saints’ Day with family gatherings and cemetery visits across Poland
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poles gathered with families and visited their dead loved ones on All Saints’ Day, celebrated throughout the Catholic world on Saturday.
All Saints’ Day, celebrated annually on November 1, is one of the most important days in the Polish calendar. Supermarket shelves are stocked with candles weeks in advance. As the day approaches, street vendors compete for space near the cemetery entrances; They sell traditional snacks like chrysanthemums and bagels, called “obwazanki” in Polish.
Special bus lines have been introduced in cities across the country, with final stops at the largest cemeteries. Residents of big cities head to the suburbs or villages where their parents or grandparents lived so that they can visit the graves of deceased family members together. Police teams set up special patrols, jokingly called “Operation Candle”, to ensure peace on the roads during the holiday.
Poland came to a standstill on Saturday as people went en masse to cemeteries to commemorate the dead. By sunset, the graves, decorated with white and red candles and colorful flowers, set against a backdrop of orange autumn leaves, exuded warmth and comfort despite the gloomy situation.
