Beetroot Soup and Carp: or, How we Celebrate Christmas in my Family

When I was little, Christmas was not my favorite holiday.  In fact, it was probably my least favorite.  I liked Halloween for the opportunity to dress up and Thanksgiving meant we got to spend the whole day with my parents’ closest friends.  Christmas, on the other hand, was a holiday we celebrated—as far as I knew—differently from everyone else, and we never had family over.  You could say that Christmas was a source of minor embarrassment for me as a child. While other kids would be excited about eating a huge turkey again and seeing relatives, I had fish and pink soup to look forward to.

As I’ve become older, however, I’ve become more and more attached to my family’s traditions.  Now, of course, I realize that my family’s method of celebrating Christmas is hardly that strange.  It’s not the American way, that’s for sure, but across the ocean in the country of Poland, there are thousands of families sipping on their beetroot soup and eating carp quite happily.

The Christmas of 2009, my parents bought me a ticket to fly back from Poland to Boston for our first East coast Christmas.  The following year, they again wanted to fly me back, but my then new-boyfriend, Gordon, was not going to be visiting his family in South Africa for the holiday and I couldn’t bear the thought of his being alone.  Instead, each of us would prepare a few things for Christmas that were special for our family.  Many South Africans celebrate Christmas in the English style, with some sort of roast meat on the 25^th and lots of side veggies.  In my family, the 24^th was the important day.  It was Wigilia.  We fasted for the whole day and in the evening had twelve courses.  (I’ve always assumed there was one course for each apostle, but I’m actually not sure).  Either way, I wrote to my mom and her friend Magda to ask for recipes.  With Gordon’s help, I more or less successfully prepared some of the main dishes, like the pierogi and the salatka jarzynowa (the Polish version of potato salad, there are many varieties, but ours was with potatoes, peas, carrots, ogorki kiszone, and apples).  Others—like the barszcz—were less successful.  The next day, Gordon roasted his first Polish chicken, stewed ratatouille, and sautéed carrots and potatoes.  Although we’d both lived on our own for some time at that point, I think we felt like we'd reached a new level of adulthood, making our own Christmas food.

Needless to say, by Christmas 2010 we had fine-tuned some of our recipes.  I began souring my beets well ahead of time and my barszcz came out quite nicely.  My aunt expressed horror that I was souring the beets on my own, instead of buying pre-made concentrate, but by this time, I was determined to be as traditional as I possibly could be.  If I could have gone to the Wisla to fish out my own carp, I would have.

For those who don’t know, one of the most emblematic of Polish dishes is the barszcz.  From what I’ve understood, many regions have their own take on this soup, but it’s always prepared with soured beets.  You peel several beets (and should definitely keep in mind that your hands will be stained a murderous red for at least a day, no matter how much you scrub them) and slice them so they’re maybe half an inch thick or so.  Place them in a large glass jar, pour warm water over them, add some minced garlic, and place some slices of dark bread over the top of the beets.  Cover the jar with a paper towel and wrap a rubber band around it.  Carry the jar to a warmish place and leave it there for a few days.  It sounds straightforward enough, but as I learned the first year I tried it, souring beets can go surprisingly wrong.

Since moving back to the States for graduate school, I’ve remained determined to follow the traditions as faithfully as possible.  I had thought while I lived abroad that copying my mom’s recipes was a way to feel like I was back at home for the holidays, and in a way I suppose it’s still about that. We follow the Polish traditions for Wigilia that my mom’s family followed when she was a child, but my parents have added their own traditions to the mix.  We always have deviled eggs for Wigilia, which is definitely not a standard Polish Christmas Eve meal, and we always listen to a specific CD of Polish Christmas carols—koledy—when we first sit down to eat.  Now with the addition of my husband to our family, our traditions have continued to change.  Although we still have Wigilia, instead of eating only leftovers or a baked ham on the 25^th, we now embrace Gordon’s roast chicken.  I think because, unlike many Americans, I didn’t have extended family that lived close enough to celebrate holidays with us, the rituals involved in the holiday have become even more important to me.  Because I don’t have a huge family reunion to look forward to (or perhaps dread) every year, I look forward to observing the traditions.  This year was a sad Christmas, because our family dog of 13 years passed away on the 20^th, and my sister went to her boyfriend’s family.  It was only my parents, my husband, and I who came together.  But as I carefully shaped pierogi with my dad and consulted with my mom about the uszka for the barszcz, I felt, again, that I was home for the holidays.