Memories, recipes of a Polish-American Christmas (2024)

BY JOE BONWICH 314-340-8133

The Polish traditions in my family come from a simpler time.

Back in the 1960s, when the post office was still profitable andphone calls to people more than 25 miles away cost at least adollar a minute, we moved to St. Louis from South Bend, Ind. Mymother's Polish family had lived in South Bend since the 1880s. MyPolish great-uncle was pastor of a Polish church, and all four ofmy grandparents' children brought their own families to Grandpa'shouse for Christmas dinner.

It wasn't nearly as cool to be Polish in our new home. Mom andDad still spoke Polish when they didn't want me to understand whatthey were saying, but the primary means of seeking out a Polishcommunity was looking in the phone book for parishes named for St.Stanislaus or St. Hedwig. Although we found them, they seemed faraway, and our ethnicity soon became irrelevant to our sociallives.

We rarely spoke directly to family — usually a limit of threeminutes once or twice a month, during weekend rates for longdistance. Our closest relatives were back in South Bend, and Dad'srelatives were 1,000 miles away in New York City.

Starting in early December, the daily mail would form the basisfor a ritual of opening Christmas cards, updating address books andmaking sure everyone who sent a card was on the list for one ofours. One card, however, was set in a special place where it wouldstay, unopened, until Christmas Eve.

This card came from my father's father and contained theopłatek, an edible, paper-thin wafer that Poles share on ChristmasEve as a sign of the bonds of family and friendship. The head of afamily usually sends one to all who can't travel to Christmas Evedinner. (In later years, after my grandparents were gone, Dad wouldsearch far and wide for an opłatek for our table, sometimes findingit only when a business trip took him to Chicago. They're currentlyavailable locally at the Slavonic Store, 3610 Bates Street, andPiekutowski's European Style Sausage, 4100 North FlorissantAvenue.)

My father's parents had been born in what was once Poland and isnow Ukraine, and my mother's grandparents came from about as faraway in Poland as could be: near Poznan in the northwestern part ofpresent-day Poland. This might explain why some of their traditionswere, well, Poles apart.

Our own version of Wigilia, on Christmas Eve, came from Dad'sside and was probably influenced by his childhood in the meltingpot of New York City and by the proximity of a half-dozen Jewishdelis to our first home in St. Louis.

In place of the traditional baked and fried fish, Dad boughtseveral kinds of smoked fish. A large dill pickle was plucked fromthe deli barrel to join the traditional pickled beets, and a poppyseed cake came from the bakery section. Another barrel yielded thesauerkraut which, when baked or stewed, would give off an aromathat reminds me of Christmas to this day.

The grocery store would provide several shortcuts to othertraditional foods: a jar of pickled herring, a can of cream ofmushroom soup and a bag of noodles, which, contrary to tradition,we'd eat simply with butter instead of adding raisins, poppy seedsor both. If there were more than a few guests joining us, Mom wouldmake a big batch of pierogi, a process the women of the familylikened to alchemy and treated as a deep family secret. (They'rejust dumplings, but we're a simple people.)

My parents kept practicing this hybrid Wigilia for the rest oftheir lives, and we've continued it in my house, with my daughterCeleste, now 19, the keeper of the pierogi technique. Shediscovered and joined the local Polish-American Cultural Society,which led me last year to my first large-group Wigilia since mychildhood. (The society holds its dinner in advance of ChristmasEve so that families can hold their own on the actual evening.)

Before the society's meal started, the opłatki were broken. Itwas a sweet ritual to witness, with each card-sized wafer brokeninto smaller and smaller pieces as the dozens of attendees, manywho didn't previously know each other, reached out to each other asfriends.

I'll still cruise several local delis for smoked fish this year,but if we're going to have pierogi, I'll have to make it myself.Celeste moved to Poland in September to work as a nanny in a familywith three young children. She's living and going to school inPoznan, a short sleigh ride from the village where mygreat-grandparents were married.

And she's promised to bring home additional Wigilia traditionsas practiced by her host family. They, in turn, have promised toshare with her their opłatek.