christmas
From time to time, I’ll be sharing a few Polish Christmas carols as we approach Christmas. Perhaps commentary, explanation, or translation would be helpful, but for now, just enjoy the music.
Przy hornej dolinie w judzkiej krainie
Paśli my owiecki przy Betlejemie
A jaÅ„dzioły z jaÅ„dziołami
A pastuski z pastuskami
Do Betlejema, do Betlejema
My tyz haÅ„ pódziemy, owce zawremy
Jezuskowi dary od nos weźniemy
Parzenice z oscypkami,
A oscypki z plecionkami
Ku obdziwieniu, ku obdziwieniu
Today our daughter turned six.
"When exactly?" the Girl asked during breakfast.
"About an hour and forty-one minutes ago," K laughed. It seems that little more than that hour and forty-some minutes has passed since then -- certainly not six years. Certainly not 2,191 days. In hours, it seems even more daunting: 52,594.
Our day ended with the Polish community's traditional Christmas pageant. The Girl played an angel, and K and the Boy were Mary and Jesus -- a Baby Jesus who already sits and claps, and squeals.
And so the Christmas season feels as if it's officially begun.
The performance from 2011 is here.
The performance from 2010 is here.
For most of K’s life, her family had an artificial Christmas tree. Christmas tree farms were nonexistent in Poland, and if one wanted a tree, one had to go to the forest oneself and cut it — after fulfilling the requisite paperwork for cutting a tree down. (Yes, it seems to me too that Poland has bureaucracy in place for everything.)
The resulting tree was humble at best. The thick, almost-bushy fir trees of the States would have likely been an impossible dream. Instead, they were sparsely branched, humble trees.
This afternoon, when K came home with the Christmas tree, she proudly proclaimed that she’d bought a “polska choinka.” With its relatively broadly spaced branches, it looked about as much like a Polish Christmas tree as one is likely to find in the States.
“And it was only $20!” she added with a smile. “I saved us $20 and got us a Polish tree.”
It seemed only right, then, to leave the decoration to those who had Polish blood — or at least that excuse seemed logical at the time.
Poles traditionally don't put up the Christmas tree until a few days before Christmas, as opposed to Americans, who seem to start getting ready for Christmas before Halloween. This is especially true in shops. On the other hand, Poles tend to leave their trees up until the end of January.
This late set-up, late pack-up habit undoubtedly comes from the Catholicism that permeates Polish society. Christmas day is only the beginning of the Christmas season, and accordingly, having the tree and decoration up during the season and not simply before it.
We work something of a compromise in our home: we decorate a couple of weeks before and keep it a couple of weeks after. Eventually, though, the time comes: we put on some carols for one last time and take down the tree.
The Girl, happy to have her dancing space back, spins in joy.
The holiday season is parabolic. We spend all this time preparing for it, getting excited for it, cooking for it, and then, in a rush and a flash, it’s all over. The lights are still shining; the tree is still up; the Girl still sings carols. But we all know that we’re on the downhill side of the parabola. And this morning, it was if the weather were supplying the scenery on cue.
In the past, this was a source of wistful sorrow, this let down after such an emotional high. It’s the return to the normal, a return from that time when everything seems to stand still for just long enough for us to catch a whisper of something greater than our everyday lives. In Polish, this normal life, this “everyday reality” is called codzienność, “everyday-ness,” and the clumsiness of that translation — that awkward “-ness” — seems somehow more appropriately descriptive of codzienność, without that scent of pseud-philosophy the “reality” part of the English equivalent provides.
Children, I think, get this on a daily, multi-dose basis on the playground. They stand in line for this or that piece of equipment, filled with an anticipation and excitement that only makes the wait more torturous. The actual activity — the slide, the swing — passes in a flash, and they’re back at the end of the line. In that sense, it’s not a parabola; it’s a sine curve. And I suppose it is for us adults as well, it’s just got a longer wave length.
Step one: arrange some improvised pylons.
Step two: break into enormous smiles at the successful completion of the first turn.
Step three: take off your helmet and engage in wistful thought
And give another hint of what you’ll look like in ten years.
My first Wigilia — Christmas Eve — celebration was a tense affair. Six months in Poland in December 1996, I’d returned to the host family with whom I’d stayed during the twelve-week training session. While I got along marvelously with my host mother, her son (I suppose one would call him a “host brother”), four years my junior, was not always the most pleasant person to be around. “There’s a lot of tension between you two!” a fellow PCV remarked after spending some time with the two of us. The tension didn’t lessen that Christmas, and it was, in fact, the last time I visited them.
The next year was the first Wigilia that gave me a hint of what it should be like. I spent it with neighbors in the small village in which I’d been posted. They were so much like family that I’d taken to calling the matriarch “Mama.” I had dinner with the whole family that snowy Christmas Eve before heading to Babcia’s to meet with the rest of the family. Laughter, singing, joy — I knew this was what Christmas Eve was supposed to be like.
My third Wigilia was in Berlin, with family of an Indian friend that made for a warm mix of the Subcontinent and the Black Forest.
The next time I celebrated a true Polish Wigilia was three years later, after having spent two years in Boston before realizing that there was something — little did I know at the time, someone — I’d left behind in Poland. I was back with my neighbors, now my landlords, as I was renting a room from them. Still like family, we celebrated another proper Wigilia, waiting for the first star to appear as the various aromas of the waiting feast drifted through the house.
Finally, during Wigilia 2002, I spent the evening with K and her family. K and I had let our long friendship evolve into something more, and while I might not have been able that evening to say it with 100% certainty, it seemed like the first of many Christmas Eves together.
Christmas Eve 2003 we were engaged. A friendship that had begun seven years earlier was a few short months away from becoming a life-long and joyous commitment.
We married a little over four months before our third Christmas Eve together. My folks — Nana and Papa, though still two years away from being Nana and Papa — had sent a tree ornament that celebrated “Our First Christmas,” with an inset for a cameo-size photo. It hangs on our tree as I type, a yearly reminder of that first year together.
By 2005, we were in the States. It was our first solo Wigilia in the kitchen. We learned a lot that year, including how to make the fermented-beet zakwas for barszcz.
In 2006, we had our first Wigilia as a family of three, the Girl still delicate bundle of spitting-up joy.
Since then, we’ve begun new traditions, with new guests that arrive every year to celebrate this holy night with us. We share the opłatek, enjoy a traditional meal of barszcz z uszkami, pierogi, fish, kapusta. We open our gifts and try them out — “Can you hear me, over?”
When the guests are gone and my girls are asleep, I sit in the living room, reflecting at the wonder of love and family, and I find myself aware that, as perfect as this evening was, it can only get better.
https://matchingtracksuits.com/2010/12/25/wigilia-2010/
A day that starts like this — sunny and warm after a cold, cloudy day before — begs to be played in (and have passive voice sentences written in). We need to visit a park, go for a walk, play in the sun.
But it’s baking day, and the Girl has been waiting anxiously — pesteringly, one might even say — for this day because she gets to use her fabulous new holiday-themed cookie cutter set. After a quick lesson, she’s ready to go.
Soon we have candy canes, Christmas trees, gingerbread men (though cut from sugar cookie dough), and stockings ready for the oven.
All we need are a few sprinkles of decorative mystery color that the Girl picked out, filled with uncontrollable excitement, during a trip to the market yesterday.
The adult versions get a coating of frosting lemony frosting and a sprinkle of roasted pistachios. A cheese cake in the afternoon and the year’s modest holiday baking is complete.