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 25th
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.
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