Photo: Piotr Mecik Piotr Mecik / Forum
The wealth of Polish Christmas traditions
Christmas is a particularly close and family-oriented holiday for Poles. The Christmas Eve table attracts relatives scattered all over the world. Gathering for this special meal provides a sense of community and stability, especially because the traditions of Christmas Eve are still alive and deeply symbolic.
The most popular traditions today, sharing a wafer and decorating a Christmas tree, are not very old – they date back to the 18th and 19th centuries. Both customs came from Germany. The wafer, as Cyprian Kamil Norwid wrote, ‘evokes the most tender feelings’, and Father Jan Twardowski described this thin, sacred baked product with the words “‘silent, white as snow’. Christmas Eve dinner begins with the breaking of the wafer. The host or hostess serves it to the guests on a decorated plate. Each person breaks a piece to share with the others. At the same time, they make good wishes and accept those addressed to them. Some will apologize to each other for wrongs done. Christmas Eve is a time of reconciliation and love. Often the eldest of those present concludes with the words: ‘May we at least meet in this order next year.’ After this solemn opening of the meal, the host goes out for a moment to serve a special colourful wafer, usually pink, to the animals in the yard.
Sharing the wafer at Christmas Party in Chicago. Photo: Krystyna Teller
Poles try to prepare twelve fasting dishes for the Christmas Eve table. The number refers to the twelve apostles or the twelve months, and the fast is a reminder of an old church injunction to keep a strict fast until Midnight Mass – the first mass of the Christmas celebration.
It is customary to taste each dish that is supposed to bring good luck in the coming year. Soups are eaten first: red borsch with dumplings, mushroom soup, fish soup – preferably cooked on heads and tails, and fruit soup – usually plum soup.
The stars of the Christmas table are fish. They symbolise Christ himself, the Christian faith, the beginning of creation, abundance and fertility. In the past, in wealthier households, the list of recipes for fish served on Polish Christmas Eve was very long, and the recipes were extremely sophisticated. They were written down, among others, by Maria Ochorowicz-Monatowa, who lived at the turn of the 20th century and was the editor of the Warsaw fortnightly magazine ‘Świat Kobiecy’ [Women’s World], considered an oracle of the culinary arts. In today’s Polish homes, the Christmas Eve table is dominated by carp, herring, salmon and trout. In the past, however, the head of a pike contained cubes that resembled the tools of Christ’s Passion: a hammer and nails. It was believed that whoever succeeded in this almost precise art would have good luck in the New Year.
Singing Christmas carols at the Polish Museum in America. Photo: Krystyna Teller
Some regional Christmas Eve dishes have gone national. These include kutia – traditionally made in the Bialystok region of Poland with cooked wheat grains, honey, poppy seeds, nuts and dried fruit. On the other hand, coulibiac, which also originated in the borderlands, is not as widespread. It is a dumpling with a filling, usually cabbage and mushrooms. Silesia also has its own Christmas Eve dishes, such as moczka – gingerbread cooked in milk with honey.
In popular belief, Christmas Eve was a day when the material and spiritual worlds mingled. For this reason, in Podlasie, for example, dinner was shared with the dead. The ‘allotments’ for them were placed near the stove on a bench sprinkled with sand or ashes. In the morning it was necessary to check whether the food had disappeared and whether there were any traces of guests from the afterlife on the sand.
The interior of the house, the table and the utensils should be clean and decorated. An indispensable element of Christmas decorations today is the decorated Christmas tree. It arrived in Polish homes thanks to German colonists who settled in Warsaw in the early years of the partition of Poland (in 1795 Warsaw was part of the Prussian partition, which was changed by the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807, which established the Duchy of Warsaw). Apples hung on the Christmas tree were supposed to bring health and beauty, nuts prosperity, baubles in the shape of bells joy, and the lights on the Christmas tree were supposed to drive away all evil. Next to the Christmas tree appeared mistletoe – an evergreen plant that parasitises Polish trees. It was hung from the ceiling and associated with the power of life, even eternity. More often than mistletoe, the Poles used podłaźniczka, i.e. an upturned and decorated Christmas tree top, or a so-called ‘świat’ [world] (also called ‘sad’ [orchard]) – an intricate spatial composition in the form of a sphere made from coloured wafers. Both decorations played the role of a ‘transmission belt’ between earth and heaven, earthly and extraterrestrial life, natural forces and supernatural powers.
It was Polish custom to place sheaves of straw in the corners of rooms on Christmas Eve, symbolising the expectation of abundance. To this day, Poles place single straws of hay under the tablecloths that cover their tables on Christmas Eve. They remind us of Jesus’ birth in a stable and can also be used for fortune-telling. If you pull a straight straw from under the tablecloth, you can expect a peaceful life; if it is crooked, you can expect trouble; if it is green, you will get married soon; if it is yellow, you are destined to become a bachelor or a spinster. It used to be that on Christmas Eve, crosses were made from blades of dry grass and placed by the windows to protect the household.
The white tablecloth that covers the table is said to resemble the swaddling clothes in which Mary wrapped the infant Son of God. In other interpretations, the tablecloth represents order, spiritual purity and even the altar on which Mass is celebrated.
Poles often bring an extra chair to the Christmas Eve table. They say ‘it’s for an unexpected guest/adventurer/wanderer’, or explain that they are waiting for a recently deceased family member, or even the Virgin Mary, who had nowhere to go before Jesus was born. In the 19th century, Poles would leave an extra place for a November or January insurgent who had wandered in the woods for years in fear of Tsarist reprisals, or for a murdered person whose spirit could not find peace.
This Polish postcard shows people going to church for Midnight Mass.
After supper, everyone went to night Mass – the Midnight Mass – and celebrated with family from Christmas morning onwards. It was also believed that each of the twelve days of the Christmas period (between 25 December and 6 January) was a meteorological omen for the whole New Year: the weather on that day would be the weather for the corresponding month. 25 December foretold January, 26 December February, 27 December March and so on.
Our ancestors used to say that ‘as Christmas Eve is, so is the whole year’, so on this special day they tried to be kind to everyone, to forgive those who were at fault, but also to pay off debts and not to borrow anything, so that the coming season could pass in peace and contentment.
Karolina Prewęcka
Source: Dlapolonii.pl
