The 1st of November (All Saints)

Today is All Saints day ('Wszystkich Świętych), a bank holiday here.

What I remember from my first experience were tons of flowers and even more colorful lights on graves. I made some photos back then, which I will show you here.

 All Saints’ Day is a Polish Catholic tradition where Poles from all over the country travel to their home cities to visit the graves of their deceased relatives and loved ones.
I knew the day in the Netherlands as well, but it is not a bank holiday there and it comes nowhere near the things taking place in Poland.

It is also quite common to hear people refer to this day as 'Dzień Zmarłych' or 'Święto Zmarłych' (Day of the Dead) – names that had been adopted during the socialism period in Poland as they did not contain any reference to religion.

So, in general All Saints is celebrated by the Catholics, plus some Protestants and in Eastern Orthodox churches. It dates back to the early fourth century.

All Saints’ Day is taken very seriously in Poland. No matter the weather conditions are like, you will see many people go to the cemeteries even a few days before cleaning up the graves.

Today, after the visiting the cemetery, people will usually get together with their families to have a meal and spend time together.

This is how it looks from above:

One of our friends once flew to Warsaw on the 1st of November. It was evening and he explained how magical this looked while descending to land on Chopin Airport. The city was just lit by all the candles on the cemeteries.

A very special tradition!