foreign witnesses and mentioned in contemporary Western maps of the city. The Patriarch of Moscow, representing Christ, rode on a "donkey", actually a horse draped in white cloth. The Tsar of Russia humbly led the procession on foot. Originally, Moscow processions began inside the Kremlin and terminated at Trinity Church, now known as Saint Basil's Cathedral. In 1658 Patriarch Nikon reversed the order of procession. Peter I in the 1720s, as a part of his nationalisation of the church, terminated the custom. It has been occasionally recreated in the 21st century. In Oriental Orthodox churches, palm fronds are distributed at the front of the church at the sanctuary steps. In India the sanctuary itself is strewn with marigolds, and the congregation proceeds through and outside the church. Western Christianity In ancient times, palm branches symbolized goodness and victory. They were often depicted on coins and important buildings. Solomon had palm branches carved into the walls and doors of the temple. Again at the end of the Bible, people from every nation raise palm branches to honor Jesus. Palm Sunday commemorates the entrance of Christ into Jerusalem, when palm branches were placed in his path, before his arrest on Holy Thursday and his crucifixion on Good Friday. It thus marks the beginning of Holy Week, the final week of Lent. In churches of many Christian denominations, members of the congregation, oftentimes children, are given palms that they carry as they walk in a procession around the inside of the church. In the Church of Pakistan, a united Protestant Church, the faithful on Palm Sunday carry palm branches into the church as they sing Psalms 24. In the Roman Catholic Church, as well as among many Anglican and Lutheran congregations, palm fronds (or in colder climates some kind of substitutes) are blessed with holy water outside the church building (or in cold climates in the narthex when Easter falls early in the year) in an event called the Blessing of the Palms. A solemn procession of the entire congregation takes place immediately after the blessing of the palms, called the Palm procession. In the Catholic, Lutheran, and Episcopalian traditions, this feast now coincides with that of Passion Sunday, which is the focus of the Mass which follows the procession. The Catholic Church considers the blessed palms to be sacramentals. The vestments for the day are deep scarlet red, the colour of blood,