What was this procession I saw?

Factual Questions
1

I tried Googling this to no avail, so I’m hoping someone here can satisfy my idle curiosity. Over the weekend, I saw a group of about 10 people walking along the side of a major road. They were all wearing white shirts with a green leaf design and some words I couldn’t read. The leaf was long and slender, with no side branchings (it was not a pot leaf or clover leaf or anything else I recognized). One of them was carrying an American flag and another a flag with the same green leaf design on white, with no other words or designs. Two of them were carrying a pole horizontally between them with a bell hanging from the pole. This was in Newark, DE, if it helps.

The flag is not a national flag, as far as my searching could uncover. Perhaps it was related to Palm Sunday, but I couldn’t find any flags associated with Palm Sunday that looked like it.
Anyone have any idea what was going on?

2

Did they appear to be of any particular ethnic group? i.e. did they all look Asian, were they all black? Were they a mix of men and women? Were they about the same age, and if so how old?

3

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a good close-up look, but I thought that at least some of them were Asian. I think they were all adult men.

4

Probably not helpful, but the only thing I could find via the Flag Identifier matching a white background with a single green leaf was the flag of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.

5

Palm Sunday.

6

With the flag and the shirts and the bell and everything? What sect does this? It does sound like it could be Palm Sunday related but I’ve never heard of anyone actually doing such a thing.

7

Are you sure it was a bell and not something carrying the communion sacrement?

8

The colors are about right, but the leaf was skinny, with a slightly skinnier stem at the bottom.

It looked like a bell. It was shiny metal and bell-shaped, as much as I could see. It’s certainly possible it was a container, though.

9

A bell like this? (it’s an incense burner)

10

It definitely was bell-shaped (flat on the bottom, no extra lip near the top like the incense burner in the photo). It might have had the decorated surface and small holes, like the photo, but I didn’t see it close enough to tell.

Thanks for all the quenstions and suggestions, everyone. It sounds like it probably was related to Palm Sunday, but I’ve never seen anything like it before.

11

I’ve been in a lot of Palm Sunday processionals, and this sounds like something similar. However, in the Episcopal church, usually the priest/rector leads the processional and is followed by acolytes and the church choir. The parishioners are next.

Oh, and sometimes a dude swinging an incense burner.

It is meant to symbolize the story about Jesus riding the donkey and the people laying the palm branches in his path.

Processional. Note the guy in front with the incense burner (forget what it’s called).

12

An incense burner is a censer.

13

AKA a thurible. The person carrying it is the thurifer.

14

Thanks you two! My mom (may she rest in peace) would give me a smackdown for forgetting those. Heh.