A Polish Christmas, Edinburgh-style

According to British officialdom, Canadians are a minority ethnic group. If fellow expats were to take this seriously, I’d suggest we call ourselves the “invisible minority.” Not only do we look like the British majority or the other ethnic minorities, we sound like Americans. On the bus, I strain my ear for clues as to whether a loud transatlantic rider is a charmingly lively Canadian or just a noisy Yank. In truth, Edinburgh Canadians seem to be few and far between—unlike, of course, the Poles.

Half a million people born in Poland now live in the UK, not including the visiting university students. Poles are Britain’s second largest ethnic minority, and Polish is now Edinburgh’s second language. There are about 10,000 Poles in Edinburgh, and when I went to a Christmas party at the Polish consulate, a monsignor told the guests that the Poles had doubled the number of church-going Catholics. When my husband suggests that I spend too much time studying Polish, I observe that I am just integrating into British society.

Cheap flights to Europe mean that all but the most cash-strapped Poles can visit Poland whenever they like, but last Advent a Polish friend decided that he would like to spend Christmas in Edinburgh. Mindful of my own first Christmas abroad, I warned him that he might be homesick. It would not at all be like Christmas in Poland. Relatively few people, let alone the vast majority, would go to church. The primary focus would be presents and food. He would have to hear “Do They Know It’s Christmas” a million times.

But he did not heed my sage advice. His family was spending Christmas in some unChristmasy tourist hotel, he said, so he thought he might as well stay in Edinburgh.

“Well then,” I said. “Come to us on Christmas Eve, and we will make you Polish Christmas dinner.”

Long-time readers of this column may remember that I am a traditionalist when it comes to Mass, Christmas, food and almost everything else. Every Advent I make my mother’s roster of Christmas cake and cookies, and every Christmas Eve I consult my mother concerning the sacred traditional Christmas Morning Bun. I could not cope with Christmas abroad without the tastes of home, and I assumed our Polish pal would feel the same way. So I zealously set about discovering what Poles eat for Christmas.

I knew that Poles celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve (Wigilia), but not that they ate 12 dishes, traditionally meatless ones, for Wigilia supper. They fast all day, and when the first star appears in the night sky, they sit down and eat the feast, washing it down with boiled fruit compot before going to Midnight Mass. Then they spend Christmas Day visiting and eating the considerable leftovers, this time with booze. It is traditionally the one day of the year when Polish housewives are not expected to do any work at all, and I’m sure you can guess why. I know why.

Reader, I managed it. After consulting the Internet, Polish shopkeepers, Polish students and the mountain of food at the Polish consulate’s Christmas party, I cooked a traditional Polish Wigilia supper. Well, most of it. I felt too shy to battle the city’s Poles for one of the few traditional carp available, so I got a salmon instead. And since the traditional menu varies from Polish region to region, I did not feel too guilty about my own variations.

Here is what we had: 1. Kompot pić (boiled fruit juice); 2. Barszcz cierwony (red borscht) with 3. Uszka (dumplings); 4. Śledzie w oleju (herring in oil); 5. Śledzie w śmietanie (herring in cream); 6. Łosoś (the salmon); 7. Pierogi ruskie (cheese and potato pierogies); 8. Pierogi grzybami i kapusta (mushroom and cabbage pierogies); 9. carrot and orange salad (for our health); 10. Kompot owoce (the boiled fruit); 11. Makowiec (poppy seed roll); and 12. Kutia.

Kutia is common to Eastern Poland, Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. It consists of cooked wheat berries and is mixed with ground poppy seeds, almonds and honey. It takes forever to cook wheat berries, and grinding poppyseeds is no picnic either. However, the kutia turned out to be so delicious, it was well worth the aggravation, the tears and the second-degree burn.

Christmas Eve was overcast, so we didn’t see the first star in the sky after all. The men insisted on wine, and I insisted they stop drinking it at nine. We rolled off to Midnight Mass, where our guest of honour was indeed startled by the nearly empty church. But I felt we had done our bit for Polish tradition.

Then, preparatory to cooking traditional Canadian Christmas dinner, I made the sacred family Christmas Morning Bun.

(Cummings McLean is a Canadian writer and author of Ceremony of Innocence.)