Wigilia

[janradder]

About ten years ago, before we had kids, haddayr and I started having a traditional Polish Christmas Eve dinner. It started out small -- just a few dishes and a few courses -- but each year, I learned more about the customs and traditions of the Polish Wigilia dinner. One year my grandmother, hearing what I was doing and remembering her own families Wigilia, sent me an article from one of the Polish papers she gets. It had recipes for Wigilia dishes and details of how the table is set. My grandmother highlighted all the food that she remembered from her own childhood that her mother would make. The next year, I set about conforming my own dinner to what my grandmother had told me about and what I'd read in the paper. It's a lot of work. I literally start cooking the meal at the beginning of December (making one or more dishes a night) and finish the night of Christmas Eve. But I really like it. Though my family never followed the tradition, instead opting for a more American Christmas Day meal of turkey and mashed potatoes and vegetables, and though I'm neither Catholic nor Christian, I feel a connection to my heritage (and my grandmother) each year when we have our own wieczerza wigilijna.

On the table, the boys and I scatter hay to remember that the baby Jesus was born in a manger. On top of this, I lay a white tablecloth to represent the Virgin Mary. In the center of the table, I place the opłatek -- a large wafer similar to a communion wafer that we will break communally before the meal. When we set the table, we put an extra chair and place-setting in case an uninvited guest should knock on our door or so that the spirits of deceased family members could sit with us if they so desired. The boys then start to peer out the window as the sky grows dark, looking for the first star of the evening so that we can start our meal.

The meal itself is meatless, though fish is not considered a meat and, technically, Wigilia is a day of fasting though it is a Black Fast (which means no meat) and there are few days where anyone in our family eats more. My dinner is an eleven course meal and has three fish dishes and three soups though, really, the dinner just needs to consist of an odd number of courses, usually seven, nine or eleven. The food represents the field (vegetables and grains), the forest (nuts and mushrooms) and the streams (fish). Once we come to the table, we break the opłatek and give blessings and good wishes to those around the table. Then we sit down and eat. This is our menu:

1st course: Borscht (or barszcz, in Polish) with uszka (mushroom dumplings)
2nd course: Creamed herring with rye bread and pickled beets, mushrooms and cucumbers
3rd course: Baked mushrooms
4th course: Noodles and poppyseeds
5th course: Fried fish fillets with horseradish sauce
6th course: Almond soup
7th course: Pierogi and kapusta (sauerkraut)
8th course: Mushroom soup with yeast fingers
9th course: Gołabki (mushroom-filled cabbage rolls)
10th course: Poached Pike
11th course: Dessert -- dried fruit compote, poppyseed roll, nuts, chocolates, tangerines, chrusciki (deep fried cookies), raspberry cordial (for the kids) and cognac (for the adults)

After dinner, several hours later, the kids head up to bed and the adults clean-up. Like I said, it really is a lot of work, but I really enjoy doing it.


Wesołych Świąt!

Comments

[sarahgoss.livejournal.com]

Mmmmmm!!!!! Some of these dishes remind me of things my mom makes (Russian-Jewish). This sounds like a staggering amount of work and I am in awe of you. Also, I want to come over to your house on Christmas Eve.

[janradder.livejournal.com]

There are quite a lot of similarities between Polish and Jewish cooking (and Russian, too). I took a course in Polish language a few years back and found out that at one point, the king of Poland had declared the country a safe-haven for Jews (back in Medieval times). As a result, the Poles adopted a lot of Jewish cuisine.

The entire time I'm making all the dishes, Haddayr keeps asking me if I'm enjoying myself and keeps suggesting that I scale things back but I really do like cooking and, in spite of how nit-picky some of the dishes are (like the pierogi and the uszka), I do enjoy myself. If you ever find yourself in Minneapolis around Christmas, you and your family are more than welcome to come. We have left-overs for about a week.

[mia-mcdavid.livejournal.com]

Left-overs for about a week? Expect us as soon as we get Tom back to the group home!!!

[janradder.livejournal.com]

Hah!

[stephanieburgis.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow. That sounds *amazing*. I'll be thinking of you guys this Christmas Eve evening!

[janradder.livejournal.com]

It is pretty damn tasty.

[mia-mcdavid.livejournal.com]

And Merry Christmas to you!

The 26th is St. Stephen's day; he was killed by stoning. I am given to understand that there is a Polish custom memorializing this where the adults toss nuts to/at the children...

[janradder.livejournal.com]

You know, someone recently wrote into the Star Tribune asking the "Fixit" column about this custom though they thought it was for Christmas day, rather than St. Stephen's. The columnist couldn't find anything about the nut tossing but then she also got some of the traditions she listed slightly wrong. I've never heard of that custom but that doesn't mean anything. I'll have to ask my family if they know anything about this.

[albionidaho.livejournal.com]

That's awesome, Jan! What a wonderful tradition =).

[janradder.livejournal.com]

It's a lot of fun, if exhausting.

[pierogi-queen.livejournal.com]

You're making chrusciki? My babci always made them for Christmas. She kept them in a big gift box lined with wax paper in her bedroom, and when we visited, she would bring out the box and all of us cousins would get to pick one. Hers were wonderful - so unbelievably light and dusted all over with powdered sugar. I can still see her bringing that box of chrusciki out to the living room where we were. My mother never made them though.

It's the custom in Polish families (although little observed these days) that the Christmas tree is not put up until Christmas eve. When I was very small, my parents put up the tree after I had gone to bed - but in later years, after Uncle Joe was born, the tree went up the week before.

My mother always talks about the trees they had when she was small. They had no electricity in their house (this was in the late 1920's to early 1930's) and their Christmas tree was lit by real candles. Her father would light the tree on Christmas Eve and then all the children would get to see it. Their Christmas gift was most often an orange - and the biggest desert treat was, believe it or not, Jello. (She also always speaks of the dried fruit compote which her mother always served on Christmas Eve.)

[janradder.livejournal.com]

I usually do have the chrusciki but they're a pain to make. It takes a lot of work to get them thin enough to be as light as they're supposed to be.

I've read about the Christmas tree tradition (and I remember you telling Nikki and I about it). I don't think either of the boys would be too happy if we waited until Christmas Eve to put the tree up.

I know Grandma thought of Jello as a big treat. She still talks about how exciting it was to have Jello. She's talked about the compote often, how they'd each get a bowl of rice and then take a small spoonful of the compote to pour on top. I didn't realize that her family didn't have electricity. It's still hard for me to believe how little money her family had (or what a tiny house they all lived in).

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

I feel the same way about Jello that Grandma Schumski does.

[pierogi-queen.livejournal.com]

Jan's Nana LOVED jello - she always made strawberry jello and then put it in the blender before it was set so that it would be light and foamy - then she would add a package of frozen strawberries. She always would say "Have some jello - it's so refreshing!"

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

Well, it IS refreshing!

[pierogi-queen.livejournal.com]

Nana would have loved you! (and not just because you agree with her that jello is refreshing).

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

She DID love me. Toward the end she thought I was you, but I consider that a high compliment.

[pierogi-queen.livejournal.com]

Whenever Grandma talks about not having electricity, Grandpa always proudly announces that HIS family had electricity.

As for the house, it was really an apartment in a four family house that was owned by the foundry that my grandfather worked for. In the 1940's, he was able to buy that house and the three family house next door. He was so unbelievably proud of finally being a homeowner. Almost as proud as he was of having become a citizen.

There were four small rooms - my grandfather slept in one of them with 3 of the 5 boys. My grandmother had another room that she shared with the two youngest kids - a boy and a girl. And the third bedroom was where my mother and her two older sisters slept - 3 to a bed. I always think of that room as the one with the Christmas tree in it - by the time I was born, all but one of the kids had left home and they turned that particular bedroom into the living room. There was a kitchen, a pantry and a long dark narrow room almost like a dead end hallway that had a toilet in it, but no bathtub. There was a tin tub on the back porch and once a week, they all got to take a bath - sharing the water. (No running hot water in the place then either - any hot water needed was heated on the stove that also provided heat for the apartment in the winter). 11 People living in 4 rooms - no wonder my grandfather drank!

As for putting the tree up on Christmas Eve - I think that custom went by the wayside because it's just such a chore to do it then.

[vee-ecks.livejournal.com]

Holy god, man. You are supreme.

Merry Christmas to you folks, BTW.

[janradder.livejournal.com]

Merry Christmas to you, as well!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_stranger_here/]

If Par ever sees this post you are going to get a surprise visitor popping in next Christmas, and I don't mean Santa.

[janradder.livejournal.com]

Luckily for us, then, we have the cats as our secret weapon to guard the house.

[naomikritzer]

Wow. I salute your cooking prowess, Jan, that's really impressive.

I decided a couple of years ago to pretend to have Italian ancestry for Christmas Eve because a seven-fish dinner sounded really good. This year I made cioppino (using a recipe I found on the Internet) and it was really good.

[janradder.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Cioppino sounds delicious.