Nadaleen Singh

More young peo­ple should take part in the tra­di­tions of the Chris­t­ian faith.That's the mes­sage from June Gard­ner, pres­i­dent of the Na­tiv­i­ty Con­fer­ence in Diego Mar­tin, who spoke to the Guardian as the So­ci­ety of St Vin­cent de Paul host­ed its an­nu­al Palm Sun­day walk yes­ter­day.The So­ci­ety of St Vin­cent de Paul is made up of homes for the aged, hos­tels, night shel­ters, nurs­eries and halfway hous­es.

Gard­ner was one of dozens of Chris­tians who marched from Nazareth House, Dun­can Street to In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day morn­ing, the march cul­mi­nat­ing at Our La­dy of the Holy Fam­i­ly RC Church where the bless­ing of the palms took place dur­ing holy mass.

Speak­ing be­fore the walk start­ed, Gard­ner said it "sig­ni­fies Je­sus' en­trance in­to Jerusalem, where he came in rid­ing on a don­key. That's the sig­nif­i­cance of to­day's walk. We tried to tar­get the youth from this year. We have quite a few young peo­ple. We are try­ing to get more youths to come out be­cause we've been do­ing this for quite a few years. We need the young peo­ple to keep it go­ing."

Palm Sun­day is one of the most im­por­tant days in the Chris­t­ian cal­en­dar and marks the be­gin­ning of Holy Week, a tra­di­tion­al com­mem­o­ra­tion of the events lead­ing up to Je­sus' death and res­ur­rec­tion.As a sym­bol of their faith and de­vo­tion, many Chris­tians keep the palm cross­es which are dis­trib­uted dur­ing Palm Sun­day ser­vice and hang them in their hous­es through the year.