The Excellent Wife (TEW)'s parents are Polish immigrants, and brought some of their cultural heritage with them when they arrived in the US, including a frightening work ethic, an even more frightening hospitality ethic (I refer to it as "Feed you until you can't move"), and celebrating Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day (I've learned to call it Wigilia, and can almost pronounce it to TEW's satisfaction). For years, with the spirit of inclusiveness that has endeared them to me, my in-laws would do a big feed for both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but now that the parents-in-law are both octogenarians (and the father-in-law is close to ninety), we've cut out the Christmas Day observance; more on that later.
The Wigilia feast is traditionally both huge and meatless. In the past, the family has been served some traditional fish dishes... but traditional does not always mean wonderful, and some of the traditional dishes were developing another tradition: that of being ignored, even as leftovers.
Last night, we went to visit the parents-in-law. Now, when the house was built, they had a kitchen on the second floor (with the living room, dining room, and several bedrooms), and years ago, they finished the basement and made a (now empty) apartment there. Then a few years ago, when they re-did the first floor, they added a kitchen to the family room. So there's a kitchen on each floor.
This came in handy, because my excellent mother-in-law (if you know TEW, would you expect anything else?) decided this year that she would forgo the traditional dishes and would fresh-fry the fish while we were eating the soup. And to avoid the smell of fish frying overpowering the second-floor dining room, she fried the fish in the ground floor kitchen, and she engaged the services of my 18-year-old niece as delivery person. Along with the fresh fish were fish dishes from my brother-in-law, who's in the business, and other kinds of dishes from all the other families that came. TEW brought a pumpkin pie, Gulab Jamun from the local Indian grocery, and I don't remember what-all else.
After dinner, we had the singing of Polish Christmas carols. I can read music a bit, and read Polish phonetically, so I sing along (and get huge cred from the excellent mother-in-law for the effort -- her English is only a few steps better than my Polish). Then, of course, the opening of the presents.
By this time, it was heading for 11:00 pm, and those of you who know me know that I've usually been asleep for a couple of hours by that time, so TEW and I said our "Wesołych świąt" and went home to bed.
Today, though, was a day for us. We hid out at home, pulled the shades, took the phone off the hook, and resolved not to answer the door. We opened the presents, went out to dinner together (using up a coupon shortly before it expired -- TEW is, as oft I have told her, a wizard of domestic finance), and came home to a brief rest before making the few phone calls that the obligations of the day would not allow us to avoid. We're now holed up for the rest of the night. We intend to rejoin the rest of the mad world tomorrow, but for tonight, well, here we are.
We hope you had a Merry Christmas, or whatever holiday you celebrate, and if you celebrate no holiday, we hope you had a happy day. By all appearances, the sun is coming back, and we may have spring in a few months -- so whatever rituals we've been engaging in seem to have been effective.
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