Boyhowdy, at “Not All Who Wander are Lost,” has a wonderful post about the Christmas season. He writes,

Somewhere in those years I fell in love with someone who loves Christmas, and ceremony, and peace on earth. Christmas came into my house, and nestled in me. (Source)

It’s something I can really relate to. Having grown up in a church that didn’t acknowledge, let alone celebrate, Christmas, it wasn’t until I was in my twenties, in Poland, that I first celebrated Christmas.

That first Christmas was a little odd. I returned to my host family in Radom, Poland, and since I was always at odds with the family’s son’s passive aggression, it was only mildly enjoyable.

I didn’t realize it then, but what was missing was simply the key element of Christmas: family. Subsequent Christmases in Poland I spent with those nearest and dearest to me in the area where I lived, and it only took about fifteen minutes of the real thing for me to fall in love with it.

Essential to the Polish Christmas is food. Huge amounts of it. Food that is time consuming to make, both due to its character and quantity. Dumplings and soups; salads and sides; deserts, deserts, and deserts.

It’s best to get started early.

Hosting our second Christmas dinner, K and I began the cooking this weekend, making 100+ kraut and mushroom dumplings and around 80 mushroom dumplings (“ears” they’re called  for barszca, the amazing Eastern European beet soup). All told, almost 200 dumplings.

That calls for cooking many, many mushrooms, cooking much kraut, and squeezing the excess water out of it,making a lot of dough, and finally, making the dumplings.

It’s a time-consuming process, but it’s more than labor. It’s an investment, for the food serves as both the centerpiece of a traditional Christmas Eve and the backdrop for the talking and laughing that fills the evening.