a fresh, healthy upcoming year, a branch for you, a prize for me!" The chant has been translated in Juha Vuorinen's novel Totally Smashed! as "Willow switch, I'm the Easter witch! I wish you health and a love that's rich! From me I bring some luck today, for this branch what will you pay?" Germany In some regions of Germany, long stakes with pussy willow, box and other twigs are taken for the Palm procession rather than nosegays. In some Southern regions either the priest leads the palm procession, riding on a donkey, or a wooden donkey (called Palmesel) with a figure of Christ is traditionally trundled with the procession of the faithful. India In most of the Catholic churches in India the palms are blessed by the priest on Palm Sunday and then distributed among the people after the holy mass. There is a tradition of folding palm fronds into palm crosses, which are kept at the altar till the next Ash Wednesday. In the South Indian state of Kerala (and in Indian Orthodox, Church of South India (CSI), Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, and Syriac Orthodox Church (Jacobite) congregations elsewhere in India and throughout the West), flowers are strewn about the sanctuary on Palm Sunday during the reading of the Gospel, at the words uttered by the crowd welcoming Jesus, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who is come and is to come in the name of the Lord God". These words are read to the congregation thrice. The congregation then repeats, "Hosanna!", and the flowers are scattered, a common custom in Indian celebrations. This symbolizes Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Indian Orthodoxy traces its roots to the arrival in India of Saint Thomas the Apostle (traditionally dated to AD 52) and his evangelism among both the Brahmans of the Malabar Coast and the ancient Jewish community there. Its rites and ceremonies are Jewish, Indian and Levantine Christian, in origin. In Syro-Malabar Catholic Church's palm leaves are blessed during Palm Sunday ceremony and a Procession takes place holding the palms. Ireland In Ireland's cold climate, real palm leaves are generally not available, so yew, silver fir, spruce or cypress are used instead; it is known in Irish as Domhnach an Iúir, "Yew Sunday." The historian Patrick Weston Joyce noted that yew was always called "palm" in his 1830s childhood, and he only later learned the tree's correct name. "Palm" branches were often