Already at the beginning of October, flowers, candles and lamps, as well as special tombstone cleaners, appear in Polish supermarkets (of course, always “at a discount”).. By the end of the month, there are more and more of them: every year in the first days of November, Poles commemorate their dead, ”writes Anastasia Kandudina in a column on“ New Poland ”.

Seasonal marketing is just an external attribute of an unusually deep phenomenon.. In a culture based on nepotism, the memory of distant ancestors and recently deceased relatives plays a huge role. On November 1 and 2, people go to cemeteries, to the graves of their loved ones, as whole families to read a short prayer together, stand in silence for several minutes, light a candle in a glass lamp on a tombstone.

Now the tradition, of course, is tied to the Catholic All Saints Day, which is celebrated on November 1 (the official day off), as well as the Day of remembrance of the dead - November 2.

However, the distant ancestors of modern Poles, being pagans, performed rituals dedicated to the spirits of the dead. Over the centuries, one tradition intertwined with another, Christianity gradually subjugated a series of folk calendar holidays, but for a long time still existed in close connection with ancient cults.

In Polish folk culture, there was a custom called Zadushki, or " The main role was played by wandering pilgrims dressed in rags: they went from house to house, taking alms from each family in the form of food, sweets, valuable gifts. In exchange for this, the tramps prayed for the salvation of the souls of the dead of each family.

In the northeastern part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, primarily in the territory of modern Lithuania and Belarus, the day of the commemoration of the ancestors was known as Dziady. It is colorfully described in the poem of the same name by Adam Mickiewicz, known to every Pole from school.

Until the beginning of the twentieth century, there was also a tradition in Polish villages to light bonfires at crossroads or near pogosts, so that the souls of the deceased, wandering around these villages these days, could warm up and also find faultless places of their eternal rest. These bonfires as guiding lights for the dead preceded modern lamps, due to the abundance of which Polish cemeteries after sunset turn into shining lakes of lights, amazing to the imagination.

In modern Poland, the ancestral memory day goes beyond the cemetery fence. In addition to purely family gatherings and meals, concerts, performances, and creative evenings dedicated to the days of the departed are held. And commemorative lamps appear in very different places: either at the statue of a cultural or political figure, then at a memorial stone or stella, then at the place of an unnamed or abandoned soldier's grave in the middle of the forest.