We start the day like we ended the evening: the Boy in a great mood. He wakes up like this; he spends his day like this; he spends his evening like this. The only time there’s fussing is if there’s hunger or sleepiness involved.
The Christmas fun begins, though, as soon as the Boy and I wake up the Girl and urge her to come downstairs. “There’s something you need to check,” I say, feeling a little strange at the thought of the inevitable: reading my own letter as if I’ve never seen it before. Is it lying? Yes, and no. It’s no more lying, I suppose, than “Dance with me Prince!” was a couple of years ago.
It’s become a common refrain in our house the last few days, dancing to this or that carol. “Dance with me, Prince!” we laugh to each other, giving that British long-A in “dance” that the Girl somehow developed when she was only three. The last few days, we’ve been dancing to everything, but mainly carols. We have our favorites, but for now, it’s not time to dance. It’s time to watch a small moment of surprised discovery.
The letter waits, and the Girl comes down, still in her PJs and clutching her beloved Baby, not quite sure if she’s seeing what she thinks she’s seeing: an empty plate and a handwritten letter.
Of course I ate the cake and drank the milk last night, sitting by the tree as K wrapped the last presents. Perhaps next year we can leave Santa a cigar instead. Maybe a new camera lens.
She sits to read what she can. “Dear L,” she begins, and unwilling to work further, brings it to me to read. As I read, I’m mindful of two things: the color ink and the last paragraph. She notices the former right away.
“It’s in red!” Indeed it is, because I used my fountain pen that I use to grade papers with. (Yes, I’m old-school and use red when marking papers. I’m not so worried about supposed psychological effects of the color. Content trumps form, doesn’t it?) Will she put the two together and observe, “Tata, you’re the only person I know who uses red”?
I decide to strike preemptively: “Well, Santa wears red, right? I guess he uses red ink.” Simple.
The last paragraph is not so simple. What was I thinking when I wrote that? I told her in the last paragraph what’s in her stocking. So I just switch antecedents: “What was Santa thinking?!” I ask as I get to the end. “I can’t read that final paragraph: he tells you too much about your stocking surprise.”
And this reminds her that she hasn’t checked her stocking. It seems, from a distance, to be empty. “I think there’s paper inside,” she infers. Perhaps it could be like Babcia and Dziadek’s generous birthday gift from Poland: a single bill that is bigger than anything she’d seen before.
Breakfast is a simple affair — a couple of bagels and some strong coffee — before we begin more peeling, cutting, slicing, ironing, scrubbing, vacuuming, entertaining, and rocking. We take a break for some carols.
Among them, my all-time favorite, the most perfectly beautiful carol ever written, with a text by Christina Rossetti put to music by the very-English Holst.
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.
After a while, the Boy is tired. It’s time for the morning nap, so I begin putting the Boy to sleep to the accompaniment of a Polish lullaby to the infant Jesus,
then go back downstairs to dance with L to this one:
Yet the simple joy is bound not to last: K comes to me with a small shopping list of things that are absolutely necessary yet have somehow been overlooked during the last three days of sporadic shopping. With a steady rain falling and the prospect of hoards of Christmas barbarians, I’m not thrilled with the idea of heading out. Still, necessity is necessity, and as I get in the car and hear the sirens of approaching rescue vehicles, I’m reminded that such “problems” are relatively insignificant.
The shopping is relatively painless, and I return to find M has arrived. Like family, M spends almost every Christmas with us lately. She is the Boy’s godmother and plays the part well, encouraging him literally to walk before he can crawl. As if he needs much encouragement: simply picking him up slightly puts a wiggly bounce in his legs and he’s ready to hop, walk, and wobble.
M isn’t the only thing that awaits me. As a sort of merry Christmas surprise, the CDs of Polish Christmas music we’d ordered and not expected until, say, Easter arrived. More versions of the same songs we’ve listened to every year. It’s sort of appropriate, though: we’re always doing the same thing at the same time of year.
The only things that change are the details — the arrangements. The jazzy feel to some of the carols make a perfect accompaniment to the final cutting and slicing for the inevitable Polish salad. No Polish meal can be complete without raw veggies in some form — surowka in Polish. At the very least, one can grate a couple of carrots, add salt and pepper, and call it a salad. We even have a Polish cookbook with a recipe for that! It’s a tough one to master, I hear.
The Girl might manage, but she’s not into grating we’re not into letting her grate — too dangerous for little fingers. She does enjoy using the veggie cuber that looks like something off some infomercial. Arrange, press, presto: instant cubes. (Some pre-slicing required.)
Finally, we reach a certain critical mass. Most everything that can be done early is done; the remaining food that will taste best freshly cooked is ready to be cooked; the table is set. It’s time to relax. There’s a perfect storm of dumplings and trout, toddies and gifts, cake and giggles that is waiting on the other side of sunset.
And of course, take a few pictures of the table.
“Make sure you get a good shot of the embroidery along the edges,” K tells me, justifiably proud of her mother’s work. Of course I promptly forget. Still, there it is in the middle, a touch of blues and greens in an impossibly perfect circle that is impossibly perfectly centered in the table cloth, all perfectly measured to fit our table. Such a covering would cost hundreds — one of the countless family treasures we have.
Soon, the guests — Nana and Papa — arrive, and it’s time to start.
The soups are warm; the onion is browned; the scallops are ready to saute; the potatoes are boiled and ready for mashing. And so we begin. Papa reads St. Luke’s nativity account:
And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This census first took place while Quirinius was governing Syria. So all went to be registered, everyone to his own city.
Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child. So it was, that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.”
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying:
“Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”
Some things are difficult to translate, but traditions such as these flow from one language and culture to another easily enough.
The highlight of the Polish Wigilia tradition, though, is the sharing of the opłatek, which comes after the prayer, after the nativity reading, after the carol singing (we chose “Silent Night” this evening). It’s a tradition as old as civilization itself: the breaking of the bread. The thin sheets of unleavened bread have the flavor and consistency of communion wafers (and I’m sure they’re of the same recipe), but this is a broader communion, a communion between flawed mortals.
We mingle, breaking off bits of each other’s bread and wishing each other well for the year. Probably we end up saying the same things, or something similar, every single year. But this is a time when the gesture outshines the words in many ways, and besides, as Catholics (or most of us present are Catholic), we’re used to saying the same things year after year, week after week. It gives us a certain continuity, a certain surety and comfort.
The meal itself paradoxically brings few surprises yet one shock, and that’s always for the best. The menu has been set for years: barszcz z uszkami, pierogi z kapust… i pieczarkami, zupa grzybowa, and some kind of fish (trout this year) serve as the basic  elements of the meal. As I said, thankfully no surprises there. However, when the Girl begins eating her mushroom-filled dumplings in her barszcz, the shock is palpable. The little girl is growing up in so many ways it’s difficult to keep track of all the changes.
The pierogi are a different story, though. At first she seems willing to give them a try, provided we play the yum game, a semi-clever trick I’ve been using to get her to eat broccoli. We take a bite and then see who can do the better job of savoring the food, chewing slowly with great and dramatic “Ummm!” and “Ooooh!” and similar silliness.
We get the first one down like this. Papa joins in on the second dumpling but has no better luck than I: L out-savors us both, though with an expression that makes me think a third is doubtful. But she’s already tried more in a few minutes than she’s tried in the last six months, so we say “Sure!” when the Girl asks if she can pass on the last two dumplings.
Just as it’s time for the main course, the Boy wakes. It’s almost perfect timing: we’re able to relax for a bit while K changes the Boy and puts on his holiday outfit.
“Now you can’t tell me that’s not a handsome boy!” K proclaims as she walks down the stairs, and who could deny it?
We sit down to the main course: whole broiled trout, scallops sauteed with lemon, basil, and garlic, a salad of leeks, raisins, gherkins, red onions, and a dozen mysteries, and (what Polish meal would be complete without) potatoes. Mid-meal I take a fish head and a bit of skin down to the cat, who sensed it apparently when I was at the top of the stairs, for she’s meowing madly and winding through my legs as I reach the basement where she’s sequestered herself during this time of seeming chaos.
As I clean up the kitchen with Nana and M’s help, K takes the kids into the living room for some portraits. As often happens these days, the Girl gets carried away with the Boy, making wild and crazy faces, whooping and hollering. (Have I mentioned she’s fond of her little brother?) Still, K manages to get one semi-decent shot of the two of them.
Yet when it comes time for the individual shots, the Boy shows why I often call him Little Man. He sits still, looking as serious as a banker. It ends as quickly as it begins, for there’s such a joy within him that it bubbles up at the slightest provocation: a funny face, goofy voice, a smile. If I had had the chance to break the opłatek with him, my wish would have been simple: I hope that the joy you experience now follows you throughout your entire life.
Finally, it’s present time. “Should we start with the stockings and have some fun?” K asks, and thinking of what I’ve set up for our little princess, I nod enthusiastically.
L reaches into her stocking to discover…a slip of paper: “You’ve found a clue; now what to do? I’m in a shoe, but which one? Where do all the shoes live?” She heads straight to the hall closet and begins rifling through shoes. I realize the error I’d created, though, and suggested she look by the summer shoes in their box.
She takes it to M for assistance. “Well, you’ve made the logical guess, which is much better than a mess. Where would you go to clean up a mess on your clothes?” She thinks for a moment then rushes to the laundry room, opening the washing machine lid.
And what does she find there? The present? Certainly not — Santa would never make it so easy for her. It’s another clue. Her excitement at this point is building, and just as I was hoping, she seems to be enjoying the hunt as much as the prospect of getting some little something.
“That crazy Santa!” she comments,
heading this time to Nana for help. “Very good! You’re getting close! Now, we need some music, but not just any kind. We need some music from just one finger: where could you get that music?” This is most certainly my worst clue.
She comes up with several false starts before figuring out it’s among my sheet music on the piano.
Papa helps with this clue: “I see we can’t trick you. I guess we’ll just have to tell. Your gifts are in the place you most fear, in two things that smell.” The place she fears most is, of course, the basement. Even though we play pool down there together, go to feed Bida, the cat, there together, and do a hundred and one things there, she’s often reluctant to go down into the basement. That’s only natural, I suppose.
This time, though, she has no trouble heading down to find, in my stinky work boots (no, they don’t really stink — it was just a way to clue her into the shoe notion) two Barbie movies she’s been dying to watch for months. Netflix always has their status set as “Very long wait,” so when K and I found them in Target the other evening, we knew what the stocking stuffer had to be. And when we remembered how very small the stocking is, we knew a treasure hunt was the only answer.
Now I fear I’ll have to do it every year.
The rest of the presents are a blur. The Girl passes out presents to us all, conscientious of spreading the joy. One for her, one for her brother, one for Nana, and so on.
Finally, the last present. The biggest, so to speak. The Girl tears open a smallish package to find…a small slip cover.
“I think that’s for your little laptop. I think Santa brought you a protective cover for it,” I say, using an old trick Nana and Papa used with me several times when I was a kid. “Shall we go and find it?” We had to her room, locate the pink laptop and bring it back down. She looks at the case, looks at her computer, and frowns.
“Won’t it fit?” I ask her, standing behind her.
“No,” she pouts.
Putting the small tablet we bought for her (really, for the family) in front of her, I say, “Here, maybe this one will fit.”
For a while, the rest of the presents fade. We sit together, exploring all the new flicks and twists of the fingers that will bring her an entirely new world.
“She’s big enough for a real computer now,” K suggested months ago when we were thinking about presents. It turns out, she was right.
The Boy inherits the old one. It’s something he’ll have to get used to, but he doesn’t seem to mind too much. It makes noise; it has buttons to press; and it tastes good. What else could he ask for?
He lies on the floor, punching and squeezing, tasting and squealing, and once again, we get one of those rare gifts: a glimpse of the future.
Previous Years
Wigilia 2003
Wigilia 2004
Wigilia 2005
Wigilia 2006
Wigilia 2007
Wigilia 2008
Wigilia 2009
https://matchingtracksuits.com/2010/12/25/wigilia-2010/
Wigilia 2011