Wigilia dinner

In Poland, the traditional Christmas meal is served on Wigilia - Christmas Eve, rather than Christmas Day.  Yesterday I was lucky enough to attend a traditional Wigilia dinner at the bosses house for the schools annual Christmas party.

First the host made a short speech and then opłatki; large, white, thin wafers, were given out to everybody.  In the Polish tradition, everybody goes around giving good wishes to each other for Christmas and the new year and breaking off a little piece of each others wafer and eating it.  I think this is a really nice tradition, very personal.




Next... food!  No meat is eaten on Christmas eve, lots and lots of fish instead.  There are traditionally 12 dishes which represent the 12 apostles, although I've heard that it's months of the year too.  Carp is the main dish, there's also a greek fish which is white fish covered in peppers and spices, different fish in jelly which I believe were spinach and salmon, smoked salmon and another variety (I never made it past the jelly) and a cold fish salad.  Mushroom and cabbage pierogi and mushroom with noodle soup was served too, as well as a few other types of salad.  I enjoyed the meal but it is mostly served cold which doesn't really suit my taste, thankfully the soup was hot and it was delicious.  We had cheesecake and poppy seed cake for desert, and plenty of helpings of mulled wine (unfortunately I'm on antibiotics for my extremely resilient cough so I had to stick to juice).

After the meal there was lots of singing, the Poles and us Engles took it in turns to sing a traditional Christmas Carol, I think the Poles really put us to shame, the songs were lovely, and they knew the words...

Finally, Swięta Mikołai made an appearance and dished out all of the presents under the tree.


Really lovely night, I'm glad I was a part of it.