Virpominen

Lorenzetti - The Entrance into Jerusalem - 1320

It isn't Palm Sunday morning; just a cold Thanksgiving eve. It was, growing up, just a Sunday when I was usually engaged as a musician playing in some small orchestra with some church choir performing some obscure work or the Hallelujah Chorus. One thing about performing in church; one is often so caught up with the thrill and fear (nerves) and the let-down after performing that the sermon was pretty much missed. Palm Sunday was, as I caught it in bits and pieces, the entry into Jerusalem, and the greeting with Palm branches - the sign of peace.  That rang true when I got a little more serious about theology and I left it at that.

I was in Finland about 40 years ago or so and on Palm Sunday so I figured I trek up the central hill to the big church you can see from the Helsinki harbor.  After the service, I found a nice lunch in the center of town and spent the afternoon just gazing out the windows at what I felt to be a pretty fair representation of Finnish urban life.  It was fun.

Long about dusk, a whole gaggle of kids appeared in over sized old coats and ill-fitting clothes, scarfs, brooms and little fake copper kettles.  I thought it was a party or something. Anyway, when making my way back to the flat where I was staying a lot of the doors had newly hung tree branches stuck to them and I figured it to be some local custom - my Finnish was pretty awful and when I asked, the answer was always "Virpominen".  I didn't know the Finnish for "What's that mean?" so I just shrugged and went home.

Not sure why this came to mind this morning other than a prompt from the music on the radio.  I did a little looking up and found this terrific article on Virpominen here.  The sticks on the doors made sense and the more stuff I've read about it, if you live in a country that doesn't have palm trees, well you make do with the local tree du jour.

On Palm Sunday, a chosen person would be greeted with the virpomavihta — the pussy window branch — and lightly touched with it. As this was being done, the child would say:

Virvon, varvon tuoreeks, terveeks,
Sinuelle vihta, minuelle lahja.

I touch you with my magic branch
That will refresh you and keep you well.
You get the branch, I get a reward.

On this something like Halloween week, the kids I saw that late afternoon in Helsinki, were just dressing up as Easter witches. It was believed that on Maundy Thursday, witches (häxor) flew off for a rendezvous with the Devil himself. They feasted and danced to the singing of magpies, flying back just in time for church services on Sunday morning, where they might accidentally reveal their identities by saying their prayers backwards.
It was also believed that on the way back from the Brocken, the mountain that served as their destination, the Easter witches sometimes got caught in chimneys. In order to deter them, people fumigated their chimneys by burning nine types of deciduous trees. These fires were kept burning Maundy Thursday to Easter morning. People also painted crosses on the doors, and even on the noses of their livestock. They did not leave brooms or rakes standing outside, lest a witch use them to fly.

Of course the entire thing is a bit nebulous as are all good traditions that evolve from a mind trying to explain something spiritual in images it can understand.  A life's lesson learned.