I was talking with a friend of mine who is Polish (but raised in South Africa and moved to Houston a few years ago) and he tells me that one of the things that they do in Poland is celebrate the days of saints. With gusto.
Makes sense. Anglo-Americans do stuff too; we have Valentine’s Day and Arbor Day and Labor Day and Thanksgiving and put two months to Christmas. And Halloween.
It seems they don’t put as much stock in feast days for saints in much of America and in England as they do in Poland. Or even, they don’t seem to put as much into it in also Roman Catholic France as they do in Poland.
Just a WAG, but I think you answered your own question. In the States we already had many gathering times throughout the year, and being basically Protestent, not much importance is put on saints in general. By the time immigration from Catholic countries makes it a major religion in America, there are already well established family get-together times, i.e. Thanksgiving, 4th, etc. Saint’s Days are the established holidays(family gathering times) in Poland. Just a wager shrug My dad’s side still got together on St. Joseph’s when I was very young(March), but now its just the regular American Holidays(3rd gen is pretty secular).
I brought up that France is Roman Catholic and doesn’t appear to be as heavy on the Saints as Poland. But that could probably be a presentation of France and Poland rather than fact.
I have a theory right now it might have to do with a ‘Polish identity’ after the Cold War, but I’m not willing to bank it just yet.
Well, the Polish in my experience tend to be very Catholic. Why, in very catholic Philippines, feast days are also celebrated with gusto (such as the feast of Saint Isidore the Laborer:Feast of San Isidro Labrador )
France has never seemed very into its Catholocism (i may be wrong)
During the French Revolution, the RCC was perceived (pretty much correctly) as upholding the monarchy and nobility and a lot of the actions taken by the revolutionary government were directed toward reducing the church’s power. Throughout the nineteenth century, France was one of the major centers of the anti-clericalism and secularism that has spread across most of Europe.
In contrast, Poland never went through that exact transformation (although the issue began to rise up between the two world wars) and about the time that it might have gone secular on its own, Poland was subjected to Soviet control that made the church the center of passive resistance to that oppression.
That use of the church as a cultural touchstone probably preceeds the Soviet takeover, as Poland very likely clung to its Catholicism in the face of Russian Orthodoxy even before the twentieth century.
Each country will have its own modifying history, but you will generally find that the saints’ days are more likely to be celebrated in any country where the RCC either triumphed over or was never seriously challenged by Protestantism. (Compare Catholic (Dutch speaking) Flanders in Northern Belgium to the Protestant Netherlands on its border.)
I think it depends on where you are in the US. Buffalo, unlike the rest of the US, is a predominantly Catholic city, and one with a large Polish-American population. Saint days are celebrated to some extent, with Stanislaus being the biggie. (The big Italian-American saint day in Buffalo is Saint Anthony’s Day, and for the Irish it’s St. Pat.)
Poles in Buffalo also celebrate Dyngus Day with gusto; I think the holiday is celebrated only there and South Bend.
The actual question to ask is why the non-Poles (so to speak) do not celebrate Saints’ days. It seems to have been the common practice in Europe to do so. So the countries that stopped are the aberrations.
It should be noted that “too many” holidays is bad for fatcats to extort yet another day of labor out of the proles, so it’s bad for “industrialization”.
During the Reformation, one of the criticisms of the Protestants was the way in which the saints had appeared to take up a place reminiscent of a polytheistic pantheon. I think the Church can make a good argument theologically that such is not the case, but the day to day practice of many people made the treatment of saints indistinguishable from the treatment of minor deities. Therefore, any country or region that was heavily influenced by the Reformation is going to have fewer observances of saints’ holidays.
I think we are missing the point here slightly. When Poles celebrate a saint’s day it is to do with the feast day of the saint after who they are named . This is sometimes more important than celebrating their birthday . Thus all people named after a particular saint will get cards and presents on that day from their friends ,just like a birthday. What happens to people who are not named after a saint I do not know. This link explains more ( just scroll down to Name Day ) :-
