This month's feature story

FEATURE

by Stephen M. Szabados

Celebrating holidays and special events gave the Polish people an overall rhythm in their lives during the year, and Christmas was a favorite because it was a magical time. The festive activities surrounding Christmas helped brighten the atmosphere from the dark days of the winter. The celebrations gave them relief from their daily work and gave them a festive time to anticipate. Family, relatives, friends, neighbors, and strangers seemed to become kind, friendly, and generous.

Christmas can have an added purpose for Poles because it is a great time to capture memories for your Family History. Memories of your traditions and celebrations should be a vital part of our family histories.

Thoughts of the Christmas festivities began with the four weeks of Advent, which opens the preparation for Christmas with fasting and prayer. At the start of the holiday season, the housewives in my grandparents’ villages began cleaning their homes, and they began preparing special dishes and treats, such as Christmas cakes.

On Christmas Eve, the Christmas trees were up in most homes, but not all. The trees were hung from the ceiling and decorated with walnuts wrapped in silver and gold foil, bright red apples, gingerbread in fancy shapes, and chains made of glossy colored paper. A manger was set up in the church and their home. The children made many of the decorations. The manger and some of the foil decorations were ones that the parents had used over the years.

For Christmas Eve supper, the family placed straw or hay under the tablecloth and used it after the meal to tell fortunes. It was the custom to put sheaves of each of the four principal grains in the corners of the room. Another interesting custom was setting the table for an odd number of people, no matter how many were attending.

The party-goers watched for the appearance of the first star as the signal for beginning the supper. After sighting the star, those attending the celebration knelt in prayer. Next, the breaking of the Christmas wafer (opłatek) started with each person breaking off a piece of the opłatek, exchanging a holiday wish in the form of prayer such as God bless you, God give you happiness - Daj Ci Boze szczescie. The opłatek were unleavened wafers that were baked from pure wheat flour and water and were usually rectangular and very thin. They were identical in composition to the communion wafers used in the Catholic mass. The opłatek at the Christmas meal was a reminder in the home of the Polish villagers. The Opłatki wafers were embossed with Christmas-related religious images, varying from the nativity scene, especially the Virgin Mary with baby Jesus, to the Star of Bethlehem.

After they passed the wafer around the table, everyone got to taste the traditional dishes for their meatless Christmas Eve supper. Each dish followed the rule to use food from each of the family’s food sources – grains from the field, vegetables from the garden, fruit from the orchard, mushrooms, and herbs from the woods, and fish from the sea, river, and pond. The meal included cheese, sauerkraut pierogi, fish in various forms, fish or mushroom soup with noodles, herring, boiled potatoes, dumplings with plums and poppy seeds, stewed prunes with lemon peel, a compote of dried fruit and poppy seed cake appear.

After supper, the candles on the tree were lit by the entire family or sometimes by the children alone. Then, the whole family joined in singing Christmas carols. After that, someone would tell old Polish Christmas legends and different stories of how their ancestors celebrated Christmas in ancient times. One favorite story was about the belief that the farm animals spoke in human voices at midnight.

Beginning on Christmas Eve and continuing through the holidays, groups of boys from the village and the two nearby villages went around singing Christmas carols for their neighbors. They usually carried a szopka, which was a miniature stable with figures of the Holy Family, the shepherds, and the animals mounted on a pole or a platform and carried shoulder-high. One person in the group carried the star and was called by the term gwiazdor or the star boy or star man. Over time, the person who carried the star became known as Jolly St. Nick.

The evening’s festivities ended with the family blowing out the candles and then traveling to church to attend midnight mass.

On Christmas Day, the family spent the day at home eating, singing, and enjoying the family. On the second day of Christmas, they ventured out to visit friends and family in the neighboring villages.

What stories does your family tell at Christmas gatherings? Did your grandparents describe their Polish Christmas celebrations? Are their stories similar to my grandparent’s memories? What are your memories of Christmas? What foods were served? What was your favorite pierogi filling? Did you have a cucumber salad (Mizeria )? Did you have a mushroom or chicken soup? Was ham on your grandmother’s table, or did she serve a more traditional fish recipe? What were the desserts?

Reading your Christmas memories will make your Polish family come alive for your grandchildren. They can be magic. Capture them while they are fresh in your mind. Ask your brothers, sisters, and cousins for their memories and capture them, too! Keep honoring your Polish grandparents and celebrate with their Christmas traditions.

Polish Christmas Memories