12 Dishes at a Polish Christmas Eve

In Poland Christmas starts early. We celebrate something called Christmas Eve, which is a Catholic tradition that involves a very elaborate supper, though entails refraining from certain foods. The whole family gathers on the 24th of December to celebrate. These can often involve a great many of people including extended relatives.

The Big Preparations

Despite the Church renouncing the “no meat” rule, most people still consider it as tradition and in general if you are vegetarian you would feel at home. The day starts with a light breakfast and often nothing more until the evening, as it is supposed to be a fast. Some of the dishes would be prepared beforehand, while others are done during the course of the day.

Christmas table setting

There are different stories about the traditional number of dishes Christmas Eve should consist of - 6, 9 or 12, with the explanation for 12 being that it is the number of Apostles. However what Apostles have to do with the birth of Jesus is beyond me. When it comes to what the dishes are it can vary greatly based on the region.

My own family’s course choice seems to mix up several regions, however considering we live in Wielkopolska, its customs have probably influenced us the most. Also as for us Christmas is more of a tradition, and a cultural event, rather than a religious one, we do not really abide all the rules. Here is the list of our 12 courses:

1. Opłatek
2. Barszcz - beetroot soup
3. Mushroom soup
4. Carp - fried fish
5. Herring - fish in sauce
6. Mushrooms - fried with onion
7. Sauerkraut
8. Bread
9. Pierogi - small dumplings with filling
10. Noodles with poppy seeds
11. Peas
12. Compot - from different dried fruit

Extra plate

The Unannounced Stranger

One typical custom in Poland related to Christmas is leaving one extra setting at the table. The tradition states that any guest is welcome, and if someone knocks on our door you should welcome them in and sit them at your table and share your food with them.

Symbolically we are showing to be more hospitable than the people of Bethlehem. Unfortunately it is more of a symbol as a tv undercover survey has shown a couple of years ago. Most people they asked were not willing to guest a true stranger in their home.

So much for the hospitality I guess.

Polish Opłatek

It All Starts With Oplatek

Traditionally children are employed to stare through the frosty windows into the sky to spot the first star. This would mark a sign to begin Christmas Eve. Unfortunately often it would just be done in theory as a sky full of snow clouds prevents any stars from being seen.

Before everyone sits down to the meal we all share a symbolic “bread” called opłatek. Each person gets there own piece which they then go on to break with others while exchanging wishes of good luck and prosperity.

Soup of Choice

Our Christmas Eve favourites are Mushroom soup and Barszcz (beatroot soup). The later being a great match for pierogi (dumplings). Often my mother would also bake her own bread sticks with sesame or poppy seeds.

There are many ways to serve Barszcz, however in my house we use neither cream nor beans. This broth based soup is created by adding beetroot, marjoram, and a carefuly measured amount of vinager. The final product is similar in consistency to broth with the vegetables sieved out for use as filling for the dumplings.

Carp - Yes, It Is Edible

Fried Carp

Most Poles cannot imagine a Christmas Eve without carp. British newspapers seem to love to exploit this fact to produce sensational news about immigrants fishing straight out of local ponds and rivers. It generally is a bizarre concept in the UK to eat fresh water fish.

However as I have a British survivor as my witness, yes, carp is not only edible, but quite nice when fried and served with bread and sauerkraut.

There is one downside though, you do need to watch out for the tiny bones as they are easy to choke on.

The Many Faces of Pierogi

Pierogi

As mentioned before we do not adhere to the tradition a 100% and the more customary dumplings with sauerkraut and mushrooms have been swapped for meat filled ones. Pierogi do come in a myriad of varieties from cream cheese with salt or sugar, through fruit filled (commonly strawberries), or sauerkraut and mushrooms filled, to meat ones.

Our version is a handy way of getting rid of leftovers and utilising the stock from broth and barszcz. The filling is vegetables and different types of meat mixed into a pulp and then placed inside the dough for cooking.

Old Fashioned Desert

Barszcz And Noodles With Poppy Seeds

Most Christmas Eve dishes are quite savory, however there is one exception. An old fashioned desert consists of noodles mixed together with poppy seeds and other ingredients such as in this year’s case: raisins, almonds, nuts, and orange peel. All this together makes for an intresting treat, standing out against the masses of chocolates available everywhere.

Christmas Compot

Secondly this Christmas we also had compot. The Christmas variation was based on dried fruit like plums, pears, apples, and cranberries. Served cold, this soup like drink again was not too sweet and sat well with the taste pallet of the rest of the supper.

Modern Polish Christmas Deserts

Traditional Christmas Deserts

The three cakes rulling my family’s table every Christmas are: cheesecake, gingerbread cake and cookies, and poppyseed cake.

The first one is not really a seasonal thing. The cheesecake is more of a family tradition, as my grandmother makes the best one in the whole world. Because of that every time I come home I get treated to a delicious gift.

The other two cakes are a lot less of a personal preference and can be found in many more Polish homes during Christmas time.

Gift Unwrapping

Lots of Presents

As everywhere else in the world we do indulge ourselves in the gift giving tradition. Unlike the UK or the States however we open presents on the 24th of December just after supper. As my family has no small kids there wasn’t any Santa Claus visit, instead one of the younger members gets designated to hand out presents to everyone else.

Christmas sweets

Many of the gifts are various kinds of sweets, and the cakes mentioned above are served while people open their presents. Often gifted sweets are shared out among the guests together with the home made cakes.

Christmas Decorations

In Poland people have not yet gone as far as in the USA when it comes to decorating their homes, however we do like to pretty things up. At my home we usually have many twigs and pine like decorations, including pine cones. Moreover there is an abundance of things like gold and red elements, stars, bows, bells, baubles and angels.

Window Christmas Decorations

As the table is the main focal point of Christmas Eve, the table obviously gets a lot of attention. In our case the table is just next to the big bay window, which is also a prominent feature in the living room.

White Christmas outside

Outside the house we also hang Christmas ornaments, again not as impressive as some of their American counterparts. However thanks to the lovely climate as you can see in the picture above we are often gifted with a stereotypical white Christmas.