How to Burn Blessed Palms

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DisorientingSneeze

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I keep finding more and more blessed palms as I go through closets and other clutter-catching areas in my quest towards minimalism. They must be pretty old because fear of properly disposing of palms has kept me from taking any home for some years.

I know you are supposed to burn them. What I don’t know is the more practical how. If you were me and you wanted to burn them tonight, what would you do?
 
Go outside, place them in a non-flammable dish, and light them up.

Afterwards, place the ashes where they won’t be stepped on.
 
Like a garden?

Maybe my Mary garden?

I use the term loosely as I use too much of my energies trying to keep the kids alive to worry about plants yet. I’ll whimsically ponder a lush garden in some other chapter of my life.
 
Wherever they won’t be walked upon. So, yes, a garden could suffice.
 
When my mother died I found tons of palms around her house. I tried burning them and found it difficult. It’s ok to bury them someplace where they won’t be walked on.
 
My understanding is that you can bury them without burning, too.
 
DisorientingSneeze said:
Maybe my Mary garden?
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If you had a Mary garden I think that would be lovely.

I’m going to hope that God is merciful to us moms though, because this was my first year getting palms with my kids at Mass. And trying to keep them acting reverent with the palms during Mass…well, there was a lot of whispered yelling going on. 😆

And then trying to keep all the palms in one piece as we walked to the car, especially with kids who wanted to hold their own…it was just a miserable headache. So if there are scattered pieces of palms in my car or house, may God forgive me. 😩😩
 
They did not burn as well as I figured old dry palms would.

One kid was singing Happy Birthday…because fire.

Another kid was staring into the fire like a pyromaniac.

Still another sang a confusing mashup of Marian hymns and warnings about what to do if you see a snake in real life probably because our Mary statue is stepping on a snake.

The baby was screaming inside. We went to check on her and the wind blew most of our palms away. We burnt anything that was left and put it in our Mary garden.

Catholic adventures on a Thursday night.
 
My mother just put them in a coffee can and dropped a match in there.

Also a lot of churches will collect them next Lent and burn them for you, so if you just want to put them in a bag till then, that would work
 
???

This is one of those Catholic cultural tidbits I’m not aware of. Blessed palms? Burned or buried? Don’t step in them? Can somebody explain/ provide a good link?
 
On Palm Sunday we get palms (palm fronds actually) at Mass. Sometimes they are used to reenact Jesus coming into Jerusalem where everybody stands and waves their palm as the priest comes down the aisle or something like that.

We take them home and keep them in our house for a year. The next year when we get new palms, we’re supposed to dispose of the old palms. Because they are blessed, you can’t just put them out in the trash. Blessed things must be burned or buried.

Many of us don’t get around to disposing of the old palms timely and end up finding several years’ worth in our cupboards. I know I have a few years’ worth around.

Like I said, some churches collect the old palms and burn them to make the ashes used on the next year’s Ash Wednesday.
 
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@mrsdizzyd One custom is to burn a piece in prayer for protection during a storm.
 
Cor_ad_Cor said:
@mrsdizzyd One custom is to burn a piece in prayer for protection during a storm.
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I had never heard of this but I asked the same question in the minimalist facebook group and saw many people had family stories which involved this.
 
My parish collects the palms and sister burns them right before Ash Wednesday.
 
Another option is put them in a bag and take them to the Parish. They will burn them for you during Lent.
 
TheLittleLady said:
Another option is put them in a bag and take them to the Parish. They will burn them for you during Lent.
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Some will, .some won’t. In our parish we buy ashes from a supplier as they are sifted and free of contamination.
 
We buy ashes.

We also burn palms to share this powerful symbolism with our parish.

One would have to burn a ton of palms to have enough ash, so, everybody buys some!
 
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