St. Therese Parishioners Strip Palms For Palm Sunday

By Rick Wells, The News On 6

COLLINSVILLE, OK -- Palm Sunday is the Sunday before Easter and commemorates Christ's entry into Jerusalem. It is celebrated by Christians worldwide, and often includes the distribution of palm leaves to worshipers.

Many of the palm leaves used on Palm Sunday pass through the hands of the "strippers of St. Therese Parish" -- make that palm strippers.

The folks separate palm leaves and bundle them into groups of 100 for distribution to churches all over the country.

Gloria Thomason has been stripping palms for three Lenten seasons. She says that's long enough to have heard just about every stripper joke there is and the group seems to enjoy and embrace the stripper reference.

"You are playing stripper music during (this story), aren't you," joked Gloria Thomason.

This is year three of the project, with more than three million palm leaves stripped so far.

"We distribute these palms from California throughout the South and South Central U.S., clear up the east coast," said Dennis Ziegler, F.C. Ziegler Company.

The F.C. Ziegler Company brings the palms in from Mexico and Florida. That's when the parishioners from St. Therese take over. They get them ready for Palm Sunday. Fr. Richard Cristler says it's an exercise in stewardship.

"Some people don't have the financial means to give the way they'd like to, but they all can strip palms," said Fr. Richard Cristler.

And they all do. The money they will raise supports the parish. They work at it for six weeks, everyday from 9 a.m. until 9 p.m.

So before they're through with all the palms, they'll be stripped, stacked, stabbed, cored, counted, bundled and bagged. All of that designed to make Palm Sunday more meaningful for Christians all over the country.

The work will continue until March 22nd. The stripped and bundled palms will be shipped to churches all over the country in time for Palm Sunday on March 28th.