Palm Sunday: Making a Cross From Four Palm Fronds

Each year on Palm Sunday, we take four palm fronds home from Mass and make them into a cross. There are many ways to do this. We use a technique my wife learned from her father, who learned it while working as a cowboy/ranch hand.

Making a cross from four palm fronds. (March 28, 2010)

If we used leather instead of palm fronds, we'd end up with a wonderfully flexible lanyard. As it is, we get something resembling a St. Andrew's Cross.

We have the palm-frond cross in our home through the year, until just before the next Lent. Each household in the parish returns their fronds to the church, where they're burned to make ashes for that season's Ash Wednesday.


Those bits on the ground got gathered and burned a few minutes after I took this picture. March 6, 2011.


That's me with ashes on my forehead, at Our Lady of the Angels in Sauk Centre. March 9, 2011.

I put this video in the 'Central Minnesota Theater' section of Brendans-island.com:

• "Making a Palm Sunday Cross: March 28, 2010"

What with one thing and another, it took me about two years to finish preparing this video. And that's another topic.

Related posts:

• "Ash Wednesday, 2012: Another Lent, Another Chaplet"
  (February 22, 2012)
• "Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion"
  (April 17, 2011)
• "And You Think You had a Bad Day? Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and the Other Mary"
  (April 22, 2011)
• "Colorful Catholics: Vestment Colors For Every Season"
  (July 22, 2010)
• "Maundy Thursday, Holy Thursday: Yeah, It's a Pretty Big Deal"
  (April 1, 2010)