Photography by Wes Kroninger
There’s no Christmas turkey or fig pudding at this holiday dinner – just a healthy helping of tradition and togetherness.
And butter. Lots and lots of butter.
For Christmas Eve every year, the Dublin household of Dave McKee and Sandra Puskarcik brings together family and friends for Wigilia (VEE-uh; literally, “vigil”) – a Polish Catholic dinner with a huge amount of history.
“It’s a bit of an art and a bit of a science,” Sandra says.
Dave, vice president of Worthington-based Priority Mortage Corp., and Sandra, community relations director for the city of Dublin, have three children: sons Ryan and Kyle, and daughter Kristen.
The Polish tradition comes from Sandra’s side of the family. She grew up in Campbell, a suburb of Polish-heavy Youngstown, and has been faithfully observing Wigilia her entire life.
Though she gets help from her mother and sister, Sandra is head honcho in the kitchen when it comes to cooking Christmas dinner and has been for 25 years. Getting everything ready to eat for an average of 18 people each year is an all-day affair.
“The oven’s a mess after,” Sandra says.
Custom calls for an odd number of courses – typically seven, nine or 11 – and an even number of people at the dining room table. The latter is particularly important – according to tradition, if an odd number of people are seated, one of them may not make it to next Christmas. However, tradition calls for an extra place setting every year to indicate that it is open to others.
Christmas Eve is considered a day of fasting in the Catholic tradition, so no meat may be served at dinner except fish. That means a lot of fish, a lot of vegetables, a lot of mushrooms and an impressive amount of butter, sour cream and cottage cheese for flavor.
“I probably have already used three pounds of butter today,” Sandra says as she prepares the food.
Though tradition calls for the three fish dishes at the table to be herring, pike and trout, the family has substituted shrimp and salmon for the latter two in the interest of health. But beyond that, there is precious little room for change at the dinner table.
“My dad is 92, and if he sat down at the table, it would be exactly what he expected it to be,” says Sandra.
The meal begins at dusk, when the first star is visible in the Eastern sky, and everyone must be seated at the table before the food is brought out. It always begins with the reading of two pages from a book on the tradition of Wigilia.
The reading is followed by oplatki, Communion-style wafers with honey for dipping. The people at the table pass around the dish, each breaking off a piece and offering well wishes to their fellow diners.
When the table is finally set, it is covered with nine different dining options:
-Soup with mushrooms, potatoes, parsley, celery, onions and barley;
-Baked salmon with garlic pepper;
-Opekance (oh-pah-KUN-suh), balls of baked bread cooked with butter and cottage cheese;
-Baked sauerkraut with onions, mushrooms and peas, with butter, flour and a Polish version of a roux added later;
-Shrimp with rice in butter and heavy cream;
-Pickled herring with sour cream and horseradish sauce, with red onions and parsley on top;
-A plate of prunes;
-Pierogies, dumplings of unleavened dough stuffed with potato, sauerkraut or prunes; and
-Pastries, including clothespin cookies, kiffles (walnut horn cookies), kolachis (koh-LAH-cheez, nut rolls), pecan tarts and brownies.
The opekance may be Sandra’s favorite dish, as it’s something she typically only has once a year.
Serving as the table’s centerpiece is a miniature Christmas manger scene with real straw for the manger. While Sandra prepares Christmas dinner, Dave, Ryan and Kyle are responsible for finding straw for the table.
After dinner, the whole family pitches in to clean up the kitchen. Then it’s off to midnight Mass. After Mass, the family arrives back at the house – with the Christmas Eve fast officially over – to chow down on ham, kielbasa, rye bread and cwikla (CHEE-kwah), a dish of beets and cabbage.
And even though that makes for a late night, everyone is up early on Christmas morning to open presents.
Garth Bishop is editor of CityScene Magazine. Feedback welcome at gbishop@pubgroupltd.com.
