I grew up in a family that always observed Wigilia, the Christmas Eve supper that wove a uniquely Polish meatless meal within the rich tapestry of our Catholic faith.
The vigil supper consisted of 12 dishes in honor of the Twelve Apostles. In our household, my mother made a mushroom soup with dried mushrooms imported from Poland.
She, along with my Aunt Rose, who, with my two cousins, lived with us for several years, helped my mother make a variety of meatless pierogis. Some were stuffed with cheese; others with cabbage and mushrooms. There was also a selection of fish. My favorite was baked cod with a delectable stuffing that was infused with a great deal of butter.
My sister, Julia, worked on desserts that included poppy seed bread, angel wings (chrusciki), fruit compote and babka, which usually was served at Easter. But, because of my love for this unique cake, my mother included it among the dessert choices for “Wigilia.”
Only Mom could make this culinary delight. Babka is a tall round cake, rich and delicate, made with raisins and rum flavoring, a family recipe that had been originally the creation of my great-grandmother.
While my mother, aunt, sister and two cousins worked in the kitchen preparing for the Christmas Eve supper, Dad and I, along with my older brother, Jerry, went to Uncle Charlie’s farm to gather some hay.
The first time we made this visit to his home, which was some distance from where we lived, I asked my father why we needed the hay.
“Think about it for a few minutes,” he replied with his trademark smile.
“Well, we can’t eat it!” I replied.
“No, it’s not for eating.”
Jerry was equally stumped.
“Hay is for animals,” I said, adding, “And I know we are not going to have any of them as guests tonight.”
After Dad stopped laughing, he explained that when he was a boy growing up in Poland, his family placed hay under the tablecloth for everyone to remember the manger in which Christ was born.
There was one particular Wigilia that was especially memorable when I was a young boy. After I got home with my father and brother from my uncle’s farm, my mother carefully spread the hay on the dining room table. Then she covered it with the tablecloth.
Lacking anything else to do, I decided to go into the kitchen, a place of happy chaos, and count the dishes that had been made or were in the process of completion. I counted 11.
“I thought there were supposed to be twelve dishes?” I asked my mother, who was near exhaustion from cooking and baking all morning.
Annoyed, she went over to the bread box, took out a stack of rye bread and plopped it on a dish. “Now there are 12!” she declared with finality.
I got the message. I thought it would be wise to make myself scarce until supper. Since we lived close to the Atlantic Ocean, I decided to do one of my favorite things: beachcombing. I was 8 years old at the time and loved exploring the shoreline, often finding debris from naval and cargo vessels that had been sunk during World War II.
When I returned from the beach, I joined my father and brother in arranging the chairs around our long mahogany dining room table. My bachelor uncle, who had arrived from Ipswich, where his ailing fiancée lived, was there too.
Following the age-old Polish custom, my family always left an empty chair at the table for the lonely stranger who may visit on Christmas Eve.
As we arranged the chairs around the table, I asked, “Papa, has anyone ever come to visit us to fill that chair?”
“No,” my father replied.
“Then, why do we always do it?” I asked.
“Because it’s tradition!” my curmudgeon uncle, who was always full of surprises, declared.
By 7 o’clock in the evening, our family — all nine members — were dressed and ready to observe the tradition of sharing “Opłatek” (Christmas wafer) and wishing each other blessings for the coming year before we sat down to a delectable dinner.
We waited for the arrival of my Aunt Sofie and Uncle Stanley, who were our guests for that Christmas Eve celebration. I especially liked Uncle Stanley, who owned a restaurant that served the best lobster in the city of Lynn. When I returned home from St. Michael’s School in the late afternoon, I sometimes would get off the bus to visit Uncle Stanley, who always ordered a stuffed baked lobster for me.
My mother never understood why I often did not have an appetite for supper. I never told her about my lobster diversions at my uncle’s restaurant. It was a secret between me and my generous uncle.
Aunt Sofie, on the other hand, always made me nervous. She rarely smiled, spoke, or displayed any emotion. For some reason, she always stared at me as if she knew something naughty that I may have done.
I recall that no sooner had the beautiful ritual of breaking and sharing “Opłatek” had been concluded than the doorbell rang.
Startled, Mom nodded to me to answer the door, a chore I always liked to do.
Before me stood a short, thin man, who was shabbily dressed in a threadbare suit. He wore a yellow scarf around his neck but didn’t have an overcoat to protect him from the cold winter night.
“Is your father home?” he asked in a quiet voice.
I nodded and excitedly ran to the dining room to get my father.
“Hello, Piotr!” Dad exclaimed, offering a broad, warm smile.
“Frank, this is a belt I made for you in the tannery. Something to thank you for what you did for me,” Piotr said, his voice quivering.
Dad escorted Piotr into the dining room, introduced him to everyone at the table, and offered the empty chair to him.
That was the first and only time that the empty chair at Wigilia had been filled by a stranger in our home.
Only later did the rest of the family learn the extent of what they had already surmised during that Wigilia night. My father, a sensitive and compassionate man, had helped Piotr during a time when his wife was dying of cancer. Dad not only had made regular food deliveries to Piotr’s home but also had provided sufficient funds to pay for the expenses associated with his wife’s grave illness, death and burial. Piotr’s wife had died one week before Christmas Eve.
Piotr’s presence with my family brought tradition and reality together on that memorable night.
There wasn’t a dry eye in the dining room.
Even my stoic Aunt Sofie cried.