On every Palm Sunday Finnish children dress up in Easter witches, wizards, cats and bunnies and go around the neighbourhood to hand out decorated willow branches and wishing everyone good health and good luck for the following year. This year S wanted to dress up as a black cat. I completely forgot to make a costume and S woke me up half an hour before she was leaving this morning. I am still pretty proud of what I managed to make on such a short notice!
I made the cat ears that my husband helped to glue onto a head band. Then I made a pair of furry shorts and a tail out of faux fur that I happened to have in my stash. The shorts don’t have a side seam. I just placed the front and back pieces of the sport trousers onto the fabric and cut around them. The waist has a wide elastic to hold the trousers up.
S got then to borrow my make up and she painted herself a cute red nose and a pair of whiskers. She had made all those pretty branches the previous day. (I helped a bit!)
How this tradition then goes? The kids go from door to door and recite this poem
The poem gives good wishes and finishes with the demand that you give a reward in exchange for the pretty willow branch. The reward is usually chocolate surprise eggs, candy, chocolate bars or money. You could say that this is a Finnish version of Halloween!
Happy Easter for you, too! Eat plenty of chocolate eggs!
