Polish Christmas traditions include: - Celebrating from December 24th to 26th, with Christmas Eve being the most important day - Decorating Christmas trees before Christmas Eve with ornaments, tinsel, lights and sweets - Starting the Christmas Eve dinner when the first star appears, sharing holly wafers with family, and having 12 dishes to symbolize 12 months of joy - Traditional dishes including beetroot soup, poppy seed cake, bigos, pierogi, carp and dried fruit compote - Finding carp scales under plates on Christmas Eve for good luck in the new year - Placing a figurine of baby Jesus under the tablecloth to commemorate his birth - Belie

1. Poland

2. Polish Christmas Traditions
We have got a lot of Christmas traditions. Some are similar
to yours, but others are different and characteristic only to
our country. We want to tell you about our habits.
We celebrate Christmas from 24th to 26th December.
24th- Christmas Eve
25th- First day of Christmas
26th- Second day of Christmas

3. Christmas Tree
Christmas Tree we decorate by:
Ornaments, tinsel, lights, sweets and handmade ornaments
before Christmas (not on Christmas Eve morning).
Everyone’s Christmas tree is different and beautiful.

4. Christmas Eve
We start dinner when we see the first star on the sky. Later we share
holly wafer with the whole family and we wish them all the best for
Christmas and New Year.
We sit to table where we have got 12 dishes, each one symbolizes 1
month of joy, so we must try all of them.

5. Our traditoinal dishes to Christmas dinner are for example:
beetroot soup
poppy seed cake
bigos (cabbage with mushrooms)
pierogi
carp
compote of dried fruits
bread
gingerbread
salads (without meat)

6. What have we got under plate?
• Person who prepares carp for the
Christmas Eve, picks it from scales.
Later they pack in small bags,
because during the dinner
everyone can find one of those
bags under their plate and put in
their wallet. The more scales, the
more money next year.
• Christmas is a Catholic holiday, so
under the tablecloth we put
figurine of small Jesus Christ on the
hay as it was in Bethlehem.

7. Santa Claus
He is a magical person who brings
presents to good people. Children
wait for Santa to come for the
whole year. He travels in big
sleigh with reindeer from Lapland
and has a lot of presents to
everyone there. Children believe
that he comes at night to their
house through the chimney and
leaves presents in a big bag under
the Christmas Tree.

8. First and second day of Christmas
On the first and the second day of Christmas we meet with other
members of our family. We eat then: other dishes, gingerbreads which
we made and decorated ourselves and sing Christmas carols.

9. We hope that you know more about Christmas in Poland now :).
Thank you for your attention!
Karolina
Słodkowska