How many dishes will you prepare for the traditional Christmas dinner for your family? Turkey and dressing, or a ham, maybe yams, the green bean casserole? A favorite old fashioned jello salad would be made for our gathering. Then a bread, biscuits that only grandma can bake? A couple of pies and assorted cookies. Seven or eight dishes. But twelve dishes for Christmas supper!?that's how many most Poles will sit down to, after fasting all day! It will vary from region to region, and family to family. These represent the apostles, or the twelve months of the year. Keith and I have been hearing that there are some very meaningful aspects to a Polish Christmas. There is a belief that "how goes Christmas eve, is how the year will go", so be careful that you don't quarrel, and be sure to mend riffs with neighbors.
I went to the market with my language teacher while she did some of her shopping and she gave me her family's version of the dinner and traditions. It is a meatless menu. Carp is the traditional main dish. Although Joanna will have another white fish, as she doesn't care for carp. Soups; beet root and sour rye or mushroom, noodles, several pickled vegetable dishes, mushrooms dishes, cabbage and peas, dumplings: uszka and pierogi, fruit compote, and variety of sweet breads. Poppy seed bread, and kutia, a sweet grain pudding. Most of these she has begun to prepare and will store away. Her husband is very helpful, and does the house cleaning, even windows! As there is to be no housework done on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. The meal is begun when the first star appears, and is served on a white table cloth with hay underneath, to remind of the stable where Christ was born. A consecrated piece of unleavened bread; an oplatek is broken by the husband and offered to family with a request to forgive any hurts and wishes for happiness in the new year.
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