ViSuaLLyMiNDeD

Polish Christmas is celebrated on Christmas Eve. These images are my favorites from that day and summarize some of the major elements that make a Polish Christmas, at least for me. My family celebrates Christmas as a cultural tradition rather than as a religious holiday so there are some elements that are missing, such as midnight mass. Nonetheless I think the way it is celebrated is quite different from a traditional American Christmas.

The first obvious difference is that Polish Christmas takes place on Christmas Eve evening. Officially dinner should start when the first star is visible in the sky. Dinner should have at least thirteen dishes and there is always an extra setting at the table. The extra setting represents goodwill, I guess, it is in case a lonely soul wanders by your home during Christmas Eve and is in need of a warm meal. Oh, and meat is not allowed on Christmas Eve, and this is a big departure from typical Polish meals. This means that fish is served instead as it is not considered meat.

This next picture really has nothing to do with a traditional Polish Christmas, but it was too cute to resist ;-)

Before dinner, every pair of people shares a wafer and exchanges wishes for each other. The image below shows my grandmother and mother sharing a wafer.

My family always has beet soup "barszcz" (usually spelled borsht in English) with mushroom dumplings.

Finally, for dessert we had many sweets, but the fried dough with powered sugar below is particularly Polish, called "faworki".

After dinner, we open presents. Of course as there are at least 13 dishes to eat during dinner, it takes a while. Most of the time parents like to torture children by drawing out the dining until the children can no longer stand it. Unfortunately, I was too busy during present-sharing-time to take any decent pictures ;-)