Christmas

The Polish traditional Christmas eve feast, Wigilia, has changed very little in its structure since it first started to be celebrated hundreds of years ago. Possibly the clearest proof of this is that the feast is meatless: in the older forms of Christianity, because Christmas Eve still falls in Advent, which is a fasting season, meat is not permitted until the fast breaks on Christmas Day. Only the quantity of food available breaks with the older Catholic tradition of fasting, in which the amount of food eaten on a fast day was also regulated. One polish tradition is to fast "until the first star, Gwiazdka, appears in the sky." But there is also a a Polish saying, "As Christmas goes, so goes the next year" -- so the idea is that, after that first star appears, the family should eat well and sumptuously on this special night, so that the New Year will reflect the same plenty and good cheer.

There are usually twelve dishes in this supper, representing - depending on who you ask -- the twelve months of the year, or the Twelve Apostles. (Other Polish traditions suggest that the number of dishes should be odd.) The most traditional forms of the feast start with family members and guests sharing oblatek, a special Christmas wafer, symbolic both of the holiday and of the general sacredness of breaking bread. After that comes a soup -- either fish- or vegetable-based: borscht is a favorite -- followed by fish dishes, both hot and cold. Some dishes normally made with meat, such as the savory dumplings called pierogis, turn up stuffed with fish instead, or with vegetables or mushrooms. Other traditional dishes appearing on the table include red borscht, mushroom or fish soup, sauerkraut with wild mushrooms or peas, dried fruit compote and kutia, a dessert of eastern Poland. Regional variations abound: as long as there are twelve dishes, people in given areas of Poland will substitute some favorite or specialty of the area where they live.

Click on "read more" for an assortment of typical Wigilia dishes.

(Polish speakers: don't forget to visit Wigilia.pl.)

Pierniki are another of the broad range of sweet spice cookies / biscuits that start appearing all over Europe as the holiday period approaches. The general flavor of pierniki recalls that of gingerbread, but often there's no ginger in them at all. (Nonetheless, they seem to hold something of the same position in Polish life as decorated gingerbreads do in German tradition: you can see some decorated pierniki at their page in the Polish version of Wikipedia.) After baking, they can be dusted with confectioners' / icing sugar, glazed with a sugar glaze, or coated with chocolate.

These traditional figures, which have many other names in various Swiss dialects, represent Saint Nicholas (in Swiss German, "Samichlaus") and can be found in most bakeries in the German-speaking parts of Switzerland as Christmastime approaches. Families and kids' classes at school tend to bake them on December 6th, which is the proper Feast of St. Nicholas, and is the Christmas "gift holiday" for children in numerous European countries.

Grittibänzen are made of a sweet yeast dough similar to the one used for challah, and are often decorated with little twigs of pine or fir. The recipe below is for a very basic type of grittibänzen: the decoration can be much more elaborate, depending on the baker's preferences.

There are some modern variants on the theme appearing, including savory grittibänzen (the unusually energetic-looking gritti you see here is one of these). Click "read more" to see links, and for links to some web-bakers' efforts.