The McDonald Family Adventures: Polish Christmas (Bozego Narodzenie)

Last week at my Polish lesson my teacher Monika taught me all about the Polish Christmas traditions, so I thought I would share them. As Poland is an extremely religious country, it's no surprise that Christmas here is more about family and going to Church, rather than Santa and the commercialized holiday we experience in the U.S.

First of all, they celebrate Mikolaj Day on December 6th, which is when all the kids receive gifts from the Polish St. Nicholas. Mikolaj is not a jolly fat man dressed up in a red suit, and he doesn't leave presents under the tree. He wears red Bishops robes and leaves the children gifts under their pillows or in their rooms. This is celebrated on December 6th because that is the Name Day for Nicholas...name days are really popular here, it's like a second birthday. If you look at a Polish calendar, on each day a different name is listed and that is when you celebrate your name day! Ava's is December 24th, because her Polish name is Ewa, which means 'Eve'. Jack's (Jacek) is July 3rd.

Mikolaj

Christmas Eve here is called Wigilia, and it is a very important day. It is meant to be a day of fasting - some people don't eat at all, but at least they don't eat meat or anything heavy. This is the day when people buy their Christmas trees and decorate for Christmas (and the decorations usually stay up until mid-February). Eating cannot begin until the first star is seen in the sky. The typical Christmas Eve meal starts with a wafer, like a host, that is shared with the family and before you eat your piece you say your wish for your family. You also give some to your animals if you have any, and it's believed that Christmas Eve is the one day the animals can talk! Then the first course is borscht (red beet root soup) with uszka, or little pasta dumplings shaped like ears. The uszka are filled with special wild mushrooms that were collected by going into the forest back in September (how do they know which ones are not poisonous?!). The main meal is carp, which a lot of people buy still living and store in their bathtubs until it's time to cook them! The carp is served with cabbage and dried peas (kapusta and groch), followed by cabbage and mushroom or 'ruskie' pierogies (filled with cottage cheese and potato). They drink a special compote to help with their digestion, since eating a big meal after fasting can cause an upset stomach. It's made with smoked fruits, usually plums or apples, cooked with water and a bit of sugar. Then everyone sings Christmas carols and attends a midnight mass.

On Christmas Day it's more eating and visiting with families. Presents are also exchanged this day, but it's nothing excessive and the gifts are said to come from the stars or the angels and not Santa.

December 26th is St. Stephen's Day, and is called the second day of Christmas. It's a public holiday so all businesses are closed and no one works, but everyone goes to church again, eats more and spend more time with their families. It all sound like a very nice and Holy time of the year!

Even though we are in Poland, I would never be able to wait until the 24th to decorate a tree. We finally booked our flights back to the US anyway, so this year I wanted to make sure we got everything decorated early so we have time to enjoy it all before we leave. Since most people don't put their trees up until the 24th, it's pretty hard to find a tree in early December, but I found a bunch at the Home Depot-type store where I bought the lights for the house. I threw the kids in the car as soon as they got home from school on Thursday and we headed over there. Unfortunately the trees were all wrapped up in netting. Why do they do this?? It's so frustrating. Of course no one was outside to help, and when we spotted one single tree that was unwrapped I was tempted to buy it, even though it was too short. I decided we might as well attempt to get another one, so I went inside and found a worker who thankfully spoke English. I asked him to unwrap one of the trees and surprisingly it looked pretty good. He told me if we weren't happy with it when we got it home we could bring it back and exchange it. Sounded good to me! Since Mike was out of town on business, I needed the workers to help me bring the tree to the car. Luckily it fit inside and we were on our way. At this point it was about 6pm and we were right next to IKEA so I brought the kids inside to have dinner. Ava got their swedish meatballs, carrot salad and mashed potatoes and Jack got the chicken nuggets and fries. I got some vegetable soup and coleslaw, but everything was pretty gross unfortunately. It was almost 8 by the time we got home and the kids still had homework to do, and it was hard to distract them from trying to decorate everything and focus on their work. They ended up not getting to sleep until almost 10 so it was late night for them. Friday night we tried to put the lights on the tree but of course when I took the lights from last year out of storage, 3 strands didn't work anymore and it was almost 8pm so I didn't feel like going back out to the store. Saturday was a busy day, there was a Christmas event at BBH that the kids and I went to, then since they were dressed up I brought them to a field I had passed by to try to take a good photo of them for our Christmas card. Once I pulled up to the field and got a better look at it though, it turned out it was half mud half newly planted grass and the pictures just did not turn out nice at all. We had to rush back home and eat lunch because then I had an appointment to get my hair done for a charity event that we were going to Saturday night. Mike was due back at 6pm from Dublin, but there were high winds there and his flight was a little bit delayed, which caused him to miss his connection in Frankfurt. I went to the ball by myself, and once I got there and all the husbands found out Mike was maybe not coming they started texting him and I think we all guilted him into coming straight from the airport in his jeans! He arrived after 11 pm but it was a fun (and late) night. Sunday I ran to the store to buy more lights for the tree, I tested out all the packs but for some reason when I connected the strands of lights to the ones already on the tree it blew two sets out - so now I have to go back once again to the store so we can finally get this tree decorated!