East Bloc Christmas

originally published December 20, 2006

The Christmas which marked the halfway point of my year abroad in Italy, I opted to follow a fellow au pair to Poland to celebrate Christmas, making it my first Christmas away from home. Agnes’ warm, tiny apartment battled its bleak surroundings in Poznan, and upon entering, I was rushed by her mother, grandmother and older, autistic sister Ania, all of whom insisted I sit down and try my very first Polish dish. I plowed through it, not even pausing to ask what the mystery meat was (thankfully, as her brother later explained to me that the ground meat was not so much meat as it was pig’s blood). As her mother offered me more heaping servings, I employed my single line of Polish: “No thank you, I’m not hungry.”

The days leading up to Christmas were dedicated almost entirely to the preparation of food. I offered my hands when and where they were needed, grinding poppy seeds, preparing tea, even whipping my own sketchy batch of chocolate fudge. Who knew that two days spent in a cramped kitchen could be so enjoyable, especially when spent in the company of a woman who did not speak a lick of English. Despite our language barriers, we managed to laugh non-stop while I continued to gracefully repeat how un-hungry I was as the stockpile of food grew larger and the kitchen space markedly smaller.

Little mention was made of presents or gift-shopping. Underneath the tree, just a modest scattering of wrapped gifts sat unnoticed. Even when Agnes and I managed to slip out so that I could buy a few gifts for her family, each item purchased, on Agnes’ recommendation, was practical and affordable - warm socks for Grandma Maria, a box of chocolates for her mother, and curly gift ribbons for Ania to add to her stockpile. It became quickly apparent that gifts were nonessential to the success of their Christmas.

When Christmas Eve finally rolled around, the five of us sat around a table set for six. Responding to my inquiry of the extra place, Agnes replied, “It’s a tradition; it is left so that if a stranger comes knocking, he can join us to eat.” Carp, cabbage, cheese, bread, potatoes and more cabbage (and several other Polish dishes whose names I won’t attempt to pronounce nor write) piled one after another onto the family’s fine China, and we ate quietly in the warm glow of Christmas lights, candles and an omnibus of Papal imagery (a manifestation of one of Ania’s greatest obsessions - the Pope).

No stranger knocked, but the entire extended family arrived around 8 p.m., bringing with them sweets and wine. Crammed into the family’s tiny living room, I watched a scene that was in more ways than one foreign to me. Amidst the undecipherable chatter, I absorbed a carefree milieu that, for the past few years, had not been an outstanding facet of my holidays. The child of divorced parents separated by four states and the employee of an obnoxiously large retail chain, my recent Christmases had been marked more by hurt feelings, arguments and bitchy customers than by repose and peace.

With a quick “thank you, I’m not hungry,” I separated myself from the crowd of cousins, aunts and uncles to phone my own family and tell them that I was safe and happy, celebrating my first, gift-less Christmas away from home. It only took one phone call to remind me of the drama that I had left thousands of miles behind me. Ironically, a small disagreement over gifts had mushroomed into a nasty fight that had put two family members on non-speaking, non-visiting terms. The joyful Polish prattle gave way to cursing and resentment.

As I hung up the phone and sat on my twin bed, I stared out at the bleak, concrete jungle spreading below me. Perhaps the so-called Christmas spirit had long ago fled the tacky, over-decorated, animatronic front lawns of consumer society, finally escaped the post-Thanksgiving materialistic rage of malls and department stores, and, after much searching, found refuge in a fiscally poorer, post-Communist society, now residing deep within the thick walls of uniform tenements in the living rooms of simple folk who for their holidays asked only for food and smiling faces.

Reminiscing about the hopelessly flawed but wonderful family I belonged to, separated from them by several countries and an ocean, and surrounded by people who didn’t speak my language and knew little about me, I let out a sigh of contentment that only an East Bloc Christmas could afford.

Perhaps it had nothing to do with my family or society. Perhaps it had simply escaped my own perspective, burned by several bad Decembers. Maybe I had simply needed to get away, physically separate myself from my memories and redefine the Christmas spirit for myself. I had rediscovered a feeling that had evaded me for eight years, and it sparked a hope that the peace I now felt would restore itself to my family in its own time. The reason for its return didn’t matter.