The Tenth Joy of Christmas
Happy Surprises and Polish dinner.
So here is the story: I was waiting for my daughter to get out of school last Monday when my Brother-in-Law walks up to me (this is not an unusual occurace as his son and my daughter are in the same class) and says "Are you planning on doing the Polish Christmas Eve?" Utterly confused, as I have never done the Polish Christmas Eve dinner I reply "I wasn't planning on it, why?" "Well" he says "I bought all the stuff to do the Polish Christmas Eve dinner." "Oh in that case" I say excitedly, "sure we'll have the Polish Christmas Eve dinner."
When I was first married, we used to go to my husband's father's side of the family for Christmas eve. They are Catholic and go to Midnight Mass, so there is the whole evening for Christmas festivities. They always had a traditonal Polish Dinner called a Wigilia (although, ours was not meatless). There was kielbasa, pierogi, saurkraut, boiled potatoes, sledzia (creamed herring) with cream puffs for dessert. Before dinner you had Oplatek, which is a really thin wafer, you went and broke off peices of other people's wafer and wished them peace. It was so good and totally different from my traditions, as my heritage is not Polish, but rather German and generationally a lot further from the old country than my husband's family. After my husband's paternal grandmother died the dinners didn't happen any more. So you can understand my excitement when my Brother-in-Law (who, by the way, is Dutch in heritage) proposed having Wilgilia (and cooking to boot). This truly is an exepected Christmas Joy!
Wesolych Swiat Bozego Narodzenia! (Merry Christmas)
Holly
Post Script: If you would like to hear a really funny song about Polish food at Christmas get (or borrow from your local library) Veggietunes: A Very Veggie Christmas
Technorati tags: Christmas
Happy Surprises and Polish dinner.
So here is the story: I was waiting for my daughter to get out of school last Monday when my Brother-in-Law walks up to me (this is not an unusual occurace as his son and my daughter are in the same class) and says "Are you planning on doing the Polish Christmas Eve?" Utterly confused, as I have never done the Polish Christmas Eve dinner I reply "I wasn't planning on it, why?" "Well" he says "I bought all the stuff to do the Polish Christmas Eve dinner." "Oh in that case" I say excitedly, "sure we'll have the Polish Christmas Eve dinner."
When I was first married, we used to go to my husband's father's side of the family for Christmas eve. They are Catholic and go to Midnight Mass, so there is the whole evening for Christmas festivities. They always had a traditonal Polish Dinner called a Wigilia (although, ours was not meatless). There was kielbasa, pierogi, saurkraut, boiled potatoes, sledzia (creamed herring) with cream puffs for dessert. Before dinner you had Oplatek, which is a really thin wafer, you went and broke off peices of other people's wafer and wished them peace. It was so good and totally different from my traditions, as my heritage is not Polish, but rather German and generationally a lot further from the old country than my husband's family. After my husband's paternal grandmother died the dinners didn't happen any more. So you can understand my excitement when my Brother-in-Law (who, by the way, is Dutch in heritage) proposed having Wilgilia (and cooking to boot). This truly is an exepected Christmas Joy!
Wesolych Swiat Bozego Narodzenia! (Merry Christmas)
Holly
Post Script: If you would like to hear a really funny song about Polish food at Christmas get (or borrow from your local library) Veggietunes: A Very Veggie Christmas
Technorati tags: Christmas
Labels: 12 Joys of Christmas
posted by Homeschool Month by Month at 8:45 AM
1 Comments:
I really loved hearing about your traditional Polish dinner. We also used to have the same traditions, although we didn't call it by that name. I have some Christmas wafer in my china cabinet right now, left over from when my mom was still alive. I love your pictures, by the way. Great blog. Have a very Merry Christmas!
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