And So This Is Christmas...

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Well, it's Christmas eve & it's almost time to start getting ready to be sociable. UGH! Yes, this evening we will be spending with my family. My uncle & his partner are in from Minnesota. The rest of my family will be meeting at my youngest sister's house at 6:00 pm for dinner & Polish traditions.
We usually start with sharing of the oplatek which is a very thin wafer-like square broken & shared with everyone to share good blessings & wishes for the new year. It's pretty much made of the same ingredients that a communion wafer is made of but it's a 5 x7 inch square. Then we sit down to say grace & all each a piece of herring. I know it has some meaning & I need to find that & the Polish spelling. When I do, I will let you know. LOL! We have a meatles dinner of pierogi (dumplings) filled with potato, cheese & plum, fish, kapusta (special sauerkraut with mashed lima beans) & dried plums & apricots. We usually have a few other thigs & dessert as well. After dinner, we sing Christmas carols, Polish & English & the kids will open their gifts. Then it's time to go to midnight mass, which is at 10pm because of the neighborhood or because we are Polish...lol! Those who don't go to church stay behind & cook ham & kielbasa (Polish sausage) for the after midnight meal when meat is able to be eaten. So, when everyone comes back from church, we eat & pretty much go home after that since it's usually around 1-2am.
On Christmas day, we go to my mom-in-laws house for dinner consisting of ham, chicken, sausage (pork & turkey), stuffing, turkey, potatoes, etc. There's a lot of food!!! Then since we exchange names every year, my hubby passes out the gifts. No, he is NOT dressed in a Santa suit. It would be funny, though...shhh, I won't tell him that! LOL. After all the fun is over, we all pack up food & all of our gifts & homemade cookies from my sis-in-law & head home to relax & digest.
I am so looking forward to Saturday when I don't have to do anything! I'll just be here reading blogs, email & playing mahjongg. That is my Christmas gift to me-Rest & Relaxation! I can not wait!
There is one thing my uncle told me yesterday that may be a gift for my whole family. He found out that my middle sis broke up with the idiot guy she got back with after making us happy when she broke up with him earlier in the year. Of course, UGH, they got back together but now we found out that they are no longer together. I certainly hope so. She deserves so much better & needs someone to take care of her instead of her taking care of him & his whole family. Anyway, I'm hoping it's a Christmas miracle. I will let you know, of course!!!

Well, I'm off to the bakery to pick up dessert & bread (that I had to wait a half hour in line to order yeaterday!). Then a nice bubble bath & soon after...The Peace, Joy & Love of Christmas! (cough cough) Sorry, I just choked there for a minute. LOL. Positive thoughts (& lots of cigarettes) will get me through.

Merry Christmas to all & to all Good Luck!!!

Using a Babushka to stifle myself,

Collette

My Easter Traditions

Now that Easter is almost here, I want to share some of the Polish traditions we have this time of year. Some have been intact as long as I can remember & some a little newer but just as important to me.


Both pairs of my grandparents were born here, I believe, but their parents were born in Poland & came over in the early 1900's. My Babcia, (dad's mom). is the only grandparent still living @ 92 years old. So, we have 4 generations living here in the U.S.


We have many traditions through the year & Easter is one of the main ones. Before Easter, we have Lent, which is a Catholic time for fasting and praying for forgiveness. The day Lent starts is Ash Wednesday. The day before is Paczki Day! On this day, we eat paczki (jelly donuts with more fat than usual) to get rid of all the flour, sugar, yeast, & sweets before Lent starts. The bakeries here are packed from morning till night on that day!


On the Saturday before Easter, my Babcia, my 2 sisters, my daughter & me go to church to get our Easter baskets blessed. We take some food that will be eaten on Easter such as: kielbasa, ham, hard boiled eggs, bread, salt & pepper, and anything else you want to add, for this will be eaten Easter morning as our breakfast. We usually add a butter lamb, made by each of us, to our baskets. They usually turn out looking like any animal other than a lamb & more than likely, will have been, stabbed, squashed, or otherwise deformed due to self-consciousness of other lambs looking too professional...lol.


On Easter Sunday, we eat our blessed food for breakfast. In the afternoon, we go to a family member's house to share our meal. It consists of a sliver of raw horseradish on a slice of hard boiled egg for blessings & good wishes to all. The first course is the barszcz (white borscht), made from ham & kielbasa water, juice from dill pickles, sour cream, & peppercorns (which I usually end up biting into!). Into the soup, we put a mixture of ham, kielbasa, eggs & bread. The main entree is ham, smoked kielbasa (store bought), fresh kielbasa (made by us),bread, butter, cole slaw. Later on if anyone is hungry, we have ham & kielbasa sandwiches, usually with lots of horseradish.


Our traditions are based on lots of food & the love that goes into making them! Spending time with family is one of the best traditions you can have.


So, what are your Easter traditions? I'd love to hear what everyone does!

Talk to you soon from beneath "My Babcia's Babushka"!


Collette