The German Saturday School cordially invites you to its St. Martin’s Day Procession (St. Martins Umzug) on Saturday, November 12, 2011, at 5:00 p.m., at the Ray Miller Park, 1800 Eldridge Parkway, Houston, TX 77077. Everyone is welcome – families and friends of the school and their guests. At 4:00 p.m. there is a picnic and playtime for the children.
Saint Martin of Tours, the patron of soldiers, has been an important saint in the Christian churches for many centuries. November 11, his feast day, has become associated with a number of rituals and celebrations, one of which is a children’s procession or parade, particularly in the Catholic regions of Germany, and Austria, as well as the Flemish part of Belgium, and the Netherlands. The children typically carry paper lanterns that they made themselves, and they sing songs about Saint Martin and their lanterns. Sometimes they are accompanied by a man on horseback dressed in an approximation of a Roman uniform and most importantly, a cloak. Saint Martin’s biographer recounted an event in the former’s life when he was still a Roman soldier. On a bitterly cold evening, as he approached his garrison, he met a beggar, who was nearly naked, freezing to death. Saint Martin slashed his own cloak and shared half of it with the beggar, at the time an unlikely, charitable, Christian deed. November 11 is also the day Martin Luther was baptized and given the name Martin after the saint.