Christmas is coming! I found myself slightly surprised by the Holiday this year, just cannot believe we are almost there.  For the first time in England though, I’m not spending it at someone else’s place, I’m not in the middle of redecorating or going back home. Thus our new place got decorated.

We were going to get a fake tree, however after most places being out of stock or delivering in the middle of this week we accidentally ventured into the live tree section. And boy did it smell in there. We were very close to just dragging the biggest one they had home straight away, but after careful consideration of our dragging-power decided on a slightly smaller tree.  It was a very eco-friendly move, as after Christmas the plant is going to be decorating our not-so-used balcony.

On the other hand the window decorations are not real pine, however they do look very realistic. After gravity-defying nail plus wall action we have two windows done with a third one still waiting (yes - this does mean 90% probability of more photos coming). Considering some spray on snow on the glass or maybe cut out paper flakes on string… what do you think?

Walking down the high street, while doing my lunch time shopping, I realized something. Standing in a queue at a store I looked at the person working there and in a way admired them.

The thought that every single day I come to work, I would have exactly the same routine ahead of me. Same mundane tasks repeated over and over again. Maybe you do get a bit of variation, but a day of cleaning, followed by a day of shelf stacking, followed by a day of cashier work, and then back to cleaning, still doesn’t sound too appealing, if it even works this way.

Admittedly the closest I have ever came to such work was helping at my parents music store when I was a kid. I honestly disliked those days - dusting shelves and stacking cds and casettes. Mostly cleaning this and cleaning that, and you didn’t even get to play your music as due to my taste it might scare away the customers (and admittedly it probably would have).

Later on in life during a Christmas visit to England, just before I moved permanently, I have worked at some kind of post sorting, magazine packing warehouse. In many ways it was a sad experience, not because of the manual labour, but more due to the painful lack of efficiency and organisation. I guess I am the kind of person who cannot look at an obviously inefficient process and not even try to better it.

The packaging process involved the following steps: preparing the envelope, putting the magazine inside, inserting some other papers, lacking the envelope, and finally placing the address sticker. I was in the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, and the company was massively behind, which was how me and my sister got the job along side quite a few other temps. Even with all the extra hands they still had over 12 hour shifts, and gave extra hours to any temp that would take it.

Already during the first half a day me and my sister have quickly realized that considering we were grouped into 5 people tables, we could process the magazines a lot quicker if one person did only one action rather than try to do all the steps from start to finish. A the end of the day our table processed a lot more and a lot quicker than some of he other ones.

What surprised us though, was that instead of this being noticed we were not asked to come back after the third day. What it came down to was that the supervisors had people sign their name when they took batches of address stickers. Considering neither me nor my sister did the stickers at our table, not for most of the day at least, we were not considered efficient enough!

I could understand the motivation for everyone doing every step - it probably would ease the monotony of the work. When you’re just sliding magazines into the envelopes it does verge on a state of hypnotic automation. However we were not full time employees, we were temps to supposedly clear out the backlog of deliveries as quickly as possible.

That was just one example of their disorganisation, just to mention one more, one of the days we spent over four hours doing nothing - just sitting at empty tables, because they were waiting for the address stickers to arrive. Not that we might have been doing everything up to the point of stickers - racks of envelopes and magazines were sitting there and just waiting.

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.

Merry Christmas to everyone from me and my cat Barney!

Christmas cards, Birthday cards, Easter cards, etc. With Christmas coming there are tons of cards available in all sizes, colours and shapes. England seems to be a card crazy country. And if you have not been born in this card-land it might seem a little bit insane to you.

In Poland, where I come from, we also have cards for various occasions. Admittedly probably not whole shops devoted to them, but nevertheless there is a choice. The major difference however is that of to whom and when cards are presented.

The popularity contest

It seems like holiday cards are a way of showing off - look, I have so many friends, people who care, etc. The more the better. To the point, that the whole experience of choosing a card and sending it to a person, has been reduced to a chore that you are forced to obliged.

Well, that is if you send the card at all. Personally I was used to viewing holiday cards more as postcards, and a means to say to people I care about, but will not be seeing over a particular holiday or occasion, that I remember them and hope there will have a lovely time even despite the fact we cannot meet.

And in that sense it was very strange at first to buy cards for not only someone you WILL be seeing during Christmas, but who you actually live under the same roof with! For people both close to you and almost strangers.

Alternatively you could say in Poland cards are “little presents” given to people you might not have a close enough relationship to warrant gifts (or where gifts would even be inappropriate). This way you can still show you remembered about that person, and that they are more than a stranger.

Who gets the card?

Every year nearly all families in England (and probably in places like the US, that inherited some of the British traditions) go out and mass shop for Christmas cards. Numbers running above a hundred or two, would not be terribly uncommon. UK citizens frantically tick of their lists starting from close relations, through third cousins, to end up on neighbours, co-workers, local postman and the corner shop staff…

This approach to Christmas cards leads to their depreciation. If you are going to buy 150 cards, you are not going to pick each and every one of them by hand. You will probably grab a ready pack, which also has the advantage of a reasonable (cheap?) price.

Even if you start out with the earnest intentions of writing a witty personalized message for most of these cards, quite possible after going through half of them you’ll just run out of ideas… Not to mention all that writing.

At the office last year we have only put our signatures on the mass of corporate Christmas cards. And that was enough to make your wrist hurt.

What about the environment?

With such huge amounts of paper circulated around it does beg the question, why not cut down on cards? If you really want to send Christmas cards to a huge number of relatives, neighbours and friends, why not use email? Leave paper for closer relatives, and hand-pick those special cards.

This way you will not only help save probably quite a substantial number of trees, but also help your pocket. And money savings definitely cannot be overlooked in the current economic situation, no matter how small they might seem.