Christmas…

         What is Christmas to you? I know that for many Americans it’s a great occasion to get together with their families and close friends to celebrate. I’m not sure that everyone knows what exactly they celebrate, but the main goal is to spend time with their folks, to share great food and show appreciation to each other through presents.   My family used to celebrate this holiday every year as well. I consider myself lucky   because it’s was not so common to celebrate Christmas in Belarus. The main part of population is Orthodox and has the Christmas holiday on a different date, about two weeks after the 25^th of December.

          My grandma was a devoted Catholic; she had Polish roots and had her own Christmas celebration tradition. Our family and my aunts’ families always got together at grandma’s house on the Christmas Eve. Like for any other holiday, the preparations usually started in the morning. J My grandma cooked the main dishes and everybody brought some food too. The greatest thing about those dishes was that they were unique; we ate most of them only on Christmas Eve and that made Christmas so special too. Some of the dishes I didn’t really like in the beginning and ate just because I had to follow the tradition. My taste changed with time and when I became older I started to like most of those dishes. They were special, no meat or oily food, only fish was allowed. I loved “dessert” the most. It was a big portion of dry bagels( Russian stile, sushky), which were put in a mixture of water and ground poppy seeds and sugar by my grandmother in the morning. By dinner time dry bagels would be soft and soggy. I remember waiting for this dessert during the whole dinner. All  women in my family know the recipe but nobody can reproduce the original taste of that dish after my grandma passed away.  In the evening we started our Christmas dinner with a pray which my grandma said out loud. After that we ate and talked. When dinner was over, we finished with a prayed again.

          Another interesting tradition was pulling straws. When my grandma was setting the table, she put some hay under the tablecloth. That symbolized the stable where Jesus Christ was born. In the end of the celebration each of us drew one straw with our eyes closed.  The length of the straw showed the duration of our lives. If it appeared too short, we had two more chances to make sure it was the “right” size. I loved doing that and never got upset even if my straws were too short.

         After my grandmother’s death we continued the tradition, but it never was the same, something was missing. I think it was grandma’s spirit that made it so special in the first place.

           I didn’t celebrate Christmas in New York until last year. I guess I didn’t do it because I had no family here except my husband, and just a few friends. But last year was different. I met some really nice people who became my friends. So I decided to invite them over to our place and celebrate Christmas together. This was one of the best decisions I made last year  J. I’m happy we did it. This wasn’t the Christmas from my childhood, but we really enjoyed each other’s company, and it was great. Would like to make it a tradition.