Good Friday Lore

Good Friday Lore

Silence between noon and 3.

Cover statues in purple or black cloth. 

 No hammering or nailing on Good Friday.

Radios not turned on, except for news - no music; no movies; no dances - of course.

Live stations of the cross, walking down the highway.

Good Friday for us was cooking fish in the woods, on the coals of a fire.

My dad always planted his vegetable garden Holy Week but never dig on Good Friday! As teenagers we were also never allowed to " go out" on good Friday. We always have crawfish stew/étouffée on Easter Sunday.

My dad used to say you did not plant (or dig in the ground) on Good Friday. We did not eat any meat (including fish) on Good Friday - Mom would make egg salad or egg jambalaya (egg fried rice). We went to mass and confession on Good Friday and attended the "Stations of the Cross" procession at the church after mass.

Cover your mirrors, preferably with black cloth, because we are in the likeness of God, who was killed that day. Do nothing where there is a risk of drawing blood--shave, cut something with a knife, etc.

The mirrors were covered Thursday night. No television, radios or work on Good Friday. No crawfish boils or party in any way! Don't even think of digging in the ground.

One year we dug up some wild mint in our grandparents' pasture, it was our last time there after they passed away and we needed to get the plant. It wasn't until later that night that I realized it was Good Friday and though the ground didn't bleed, I can't get that mint plant to grow more than one little sprig, barely two inches high then it dies. 

 My dad was a rice farmer and this was a very busy time for us with planting and everything that goes with it. The old people use to say if you dig into the ground on Good Friday it would bleed. We would try to get the day off from shovel work but my dad said get your butts in the field and if the ground bleeds you can have the day off ! And despite all of our digging the ground never bled. -KR

Avril 2013

Opelousas Road Good Friday

A Good Friday Story: Wild Mint

We had been working in the garden all of Holy Week as usual last year, but I kept on reminding my family not to dig on Good Friday. There is a belief that the ground will bleed the blood of Christ if you dig on the day he was crucified. The urge is strong as gravity to garden in the spring, but, resolved not to dig, so as not to disturb the sleeping blood of Jesus that lurks just below the surface on that day only, lest it burst forth under our toils and ruin our Easter completely, we abstained.

So, on Good Friday, we went to Pilette, a place between Lafayette and Broussard, to the newly emptied homestead of our grandparents who had just passed, both in the spring, less than a year apart. We went to see the empty house for the last time. There was certainty that the land would be sold and developed, as it was open land on a major thoroughfare in Lafayette. We did one last walk through the pasture to pick blackberries, gathering honeysuckle and dodging the other uncle's horses who were stalled at the barn. We reminisced about the drive-in theater that was on the property in the 1950's, and the Cajun bands who played there at the Bayou Jamboree. While we were walking, Nonc Dav guided us to the shady spot near the road where they used to find a wild mint growing. Mint is so hardy, it survived in rank competition of the blackberry bushes and tall goldenrod for all these years. We found it in many little patches, very small plants, a lovely spearmint. I imagined that it was in the yard of some homestead off of Pinhook Road 100 years ago, which was then open country, or else that Granny herself had planted it when she was a young bride. We decided to bring some home. So one of us ran back to the house to get a spoon and cup and we dug it up right there. It wasn't until late that night that, shocked, I realized what we had done. And though you think it would have, the ancestral land did not bleed.

Granny's Wild Pilette Mint

Update: After three years of encouragement, I could not get this mint to survive more than one season and it was lost in the garden.