THE Christmas trees are elaborately decorated, the table set with the traditional white cloth – an additional place set for the unexpected guest, the Krakow crib glistens in the candlelight, the piernik honey cake is adorned with almonds and crystallised fruit. All the Brodzinskis need now is a solitary star…
While many of us spend tonight in a frenetic last minute tizzy of shopping, wrapping or furiously stuffing a recalcitrant turkey, for Scotland's Polish community, currently an estimated 70,000 strong, the major celebration of Wigilia – the Christmas Eve supper – will already be underway. Today's Polish households may no longer opt for the whole 12 courses of the traditional meatless feast (one course for each of the apostles), but for Polish Scots like Witold and Izabella Brodzinska, resident in Edinburgh for more than 40 years, Wigilia remains the high point of the season and an enduring link with the homeland.
On their table, glittering with glasses and napery, the central candelabra is flanked by thin oplatek wafers – rather like communion wafers but unconsecrated, which will be broken and symbolically shared, often with a blessing, at the beginning of the supper. Some of these wafers have been enclosed in cards sent from family members in Poland. "For Polish people, Christmas Eve is so important," says Izabella. "During the war soldiers or prisoners of war, if they did not have it, would share bread instead. It's hard to explain how we feel about it all – a bit like how the Scots celebrate St Andrew's day, or Burns Night, no matter where they are in the world."
One might expect someone in her situation to uphold such traditions – she is, after all, chairwoman of the Scottish Polish Cultural Association, and has been active in the Polish community here for the past four decades. Last week she was one of 800 guests invited by the president, Lech Kaczynsky, to celebrate the 90th anniversary of Polish independence. Both she and her husband were Polish-born but came to Scotland after their fathers had arrived here with the Polish army during the Second World War. But, she says, Wigilia also remains important to the recent wave of younger Polish immigrants – "You should see the queue at Deli Polonia in Leith walk; it was outside the shop."
In her kitchen are the ingredients for some of the Wigilia feast – a bowl of robust-looking fresh beetroot, grown by her sister, who also lives in Edinburgh, which she will grate to make the first course of borszcz – beetroot soup. "It's very warming and nourishing in the winter time, although some people serve mushroom soup instead. The important thing is that you don't bring the beetroot to the boil; I boil the stock separately." These days, she tends to use beef stock for it, she confesses, smiling: "Traditionally there should be no meat in the meal at all and my Mum used to be very strict about that. I just use it for flavouring."
The soup is served with little dumplings stuffed with mushrooms. Other courses she serves include sauerkraut, and fish – traditionally carp, which she cooks if she can get it; otherwise she bakes trout. A packet of poppy seeds on a work surface will be mixed with layers of sponge, honey, raisins, flaked almonds and brandy or sherry for a rich cake, while the final course is already made – ginger and honey cake, coated in icing sugar and decorated with almonds and candied fruit, still glistening in their baking tins. "Here you have mince pies, in Poland we have ginger and honey cake."
Traditionally, it is after this dinner that Christmas gifts are exchanged in Poland, though many of those living in Scotland now wait until the 25th.
On the dining room mantelpiece an elaborate looking Christmas crib glimmers in the candlelight. It is a Krakow crib, and looks more like a small castle than the usual humble stable, reflecting the imposing architecture of the old town, where crib-making is something of a folk art, having been revived in the 1930s and promoted by an annual crib-making competition.
Krakow reminds her very much of Edinburgh, says Iza. "They both have castles, and plenty of students – and tourists." She grew up outside Krakow, in Czestochowa, a centre of pilgrimage with its "Black Madonna". The war disrupted everything; neither she nor her husband saw their fathers until they came to join them in Scotland after the Second World War.
The war saw 50,000 Polish servicemen arrive in Britain after escaping through France in 1940, some 10,000 of them settling here to form a now well-established community. In recent years Poland's entry into the EU has prompted a new wave of younger economic immigrants and there are currently an estimated 70,000 Poles resident in Scotland, although as the economic gap between the two countries decreases, some are heading homewards. "There are not so many of the old generation left," says Iza.
But while we tend to know all about the Poles who have settled in Scotland, we don't hear so much about the thousands of Scots merchants and mercenaries who settled in Poland as far back as the mid-15th century. During her recent visit Iza, along with Linda Fabiani, Scotland's Minister for Europe and culture, and art impresario Richard Demarco, among others, attended the unveiling of a plaque in the heart of Warsaw's old town to commemorate one Alexander Chalmers – "Czamer" in Polish, an Aberdonian merchant who arrived in Warsaw in the 1670s and clearly made quite an impression: he was elected mayor of the city for four separate terms.
The 17th century saw an estimated 40,000 Scots settled in the old kingdom of Poland, many of them from North-East Scotland. Many became extremely wealthy and powerful, being granted royal grants and privileges, and when an appeal was made in 1701 to fund the restoration of Aberdeen's Marischal College, the Scottish community in Poland responded generously.
However, it seems that they weren't always in such good odour. In 1615, The "Scottish Resident" in Poland, Patrick Gordon, reported to King James: "The most part use such a dissolute form of living that they are odious to the inhabitants, hurtful to themselves and despised by strangers, to the greatest ignominy of the whole nation."
These days, however, it is the Poles who are coming to Scotland, in the process significantly boosting congregations for the Catholic church here. After their Wigilia feast, the Brodzinskis and their guests – including their daughter and granddaughter, the latter, at two-and-a-half, already becoming bilingual, will head for St Mary's Catholic cathedral for nine o'clock mass. Until a few years ago it was the traditional midnight mass at St Anne's Oratory in Edinburgh's Randolph Place, the loss of which as a church remains a matter of regret to many in the city's Polish community.
Traditionally, however, Polish families do not sit down for their Wigilia supper until the first star has appeared in the sky. Izabella recalls how, when she was child, "my mother used to send me outside. I was the youngest and my sister would be helping in the kitchen, and my mother would say to me, 'When the first star appears, you come in quickly and we sit down.' She was very precise about it."
So if our famously uncooperative Scottish weather proves cloudy, does everyone go hungry? Witold laughs: "We just say, 'OK, we sit down at seven o'clock.'"
• For further information see
www.scotpoles.co.ukBACKGROUNDMANY countries make more of Christmas Eve than of Christmas Day itself. In Finland, for instance, the night before Christmas is a time for family gatherings, with customs including lighting candles by the graves of deceased family members. In Denmark too the main dinner is served on Christmas Eve – often roast pork, goose or duck, traditionally followed by a rice pudding concealing a hidden almond, the finder claiming a present called "the almond gift". In Sweden, the ritual of Julbord, below, which means Christmas Table, is a feast that stems back to farmers sharing the bounty of their autumn harvest.
In eastern European countries such as Ukraine and Lithuania, as in Poland, an elaborate meal, traditionally of 12 meatless dishes, is served to mark the end of a fast. In Slavic cultures, it is a time for honouring the spirits of departed family members.
In Mexico, December is a time of fiesta and pilgrimage, and Christmas Eve – Noche Buena – is very much a family day, starting with the last of a series of posadas or fiestas, and ending with a lavish dinner, after which adults exchange gifts and a midnight mass – misa de gallo – is held.
RECIPE
Izabella Brodzinska's Piernik – ginger and honey cake
For the cake:650g/1lb 6oz self-raising flour
1 glassful demerara sugar
5 egg yolks (reserve the whites)
250g/ 0.5lb butter
1 jar or 400g honey
Packet of prepared Do Piernika spices (available from a Polish deli)
1 wine glass of sweet cream sherry
1 cup of mixed nuts
1 cup sultanasFor the icing:About five tablespoonfuls icing sugar (depending on how thick you want it)
Juice of 1-2 lemons, according to tasteMethodBlend butter, egg yolks and sugar in a blender until mix is almost golden brown, then add honey.
Stir Do Piernika spices into the self-raising flour, then gradually stir flour into the mixture. Once flour is properly mixed in, add sherry and mix again. Then slowly stir in mixed nuts, then the sultanas.
Beat the egg whites until stiff, then finally fold them into the mix with a wooden spoon.
Preheat oven to 180C/360F/gas mark 5. Put the mixture into three greased rectangular loaf baking trays and bake in the oven for about an hour.
For icing, mix the icing sugar with lemon juice to taste and apply to the cake. Decorate it with almond flakes and candied fruit.
