Peeling the Cultural Leek

I know that that saying is supposed to be ‘peel the cultural onion’: the visual suggests layer upon layer of social mores as applied to any culture, and it is quite apt.

However, a few years into my China adventure I wrote an article titled Peeling the Cultural Onion, and I can’t have two articles with the same title, can I?

Besides, leeks are so tasty, feature heavily in Polish cuisine and happen to be in season right now.

Thus, we peel the cultural leek.

I was quite fortunate to land here in time to experience two of the more significant Polish holidays: National Day – the celebration of this country’s independence observed on the 11^th of November, and Christmas, this country’s second-most important holiday.

Polish society is overwhelmingly Catholic; thus Easter, the day that Christ arose, is more significant than the celebration of His birth and considered the most important religious holiday of the year.

Independence Day is the most important secular holiday but, as far as culture goes, it lags behind both Easter and Christmas.

About a week ago, I started seeing placards on shop windows announcing operating hours for the Easter weekend. Not even Christmas commanded such advance warning!

As this observance is so culturally relevant, you might want to know how they celebrate it.

Easter in Poland

Even as I write this, Easter observances are going on: Poland considers the Easter celebration to start on Palm Sunday and last through Wet Monday – what English speakers know as Easter Monday.

Very unimaginative, that appellation, when compared to Poland’s Śmigus-dyngus (pronounced sh-meegus-dingus)

All week long, church bells have chimed at noon, again at 1500 and finally at 2100. On Good Friday, there will be a Midnight Mass that well and truly kicks off the religious aspects of this celebration.

On Saturday, baskets of food will be taken to the church so that the contents can be blessed; those ingredients will make up the next day’s Easter feast.

Traditional fare includes:

• White sausage – a bit like a bratwurst, it is sometimes an ingredient of the żurek.
• Żurek: a rye-flour soup garnished with egg and white sausage (more on this soup in a minute!)
• Herring: marinated in vinegar and oil, it is topped with loads of chopped onions.
  • The Easter celebration demands hand-prepared herring; store-bought won’t do!
• Grated horseradish root: a fine complement to the vegetables
• Cakes: mazurek – a throwback to the Ottoman Empire’s occupation, Sernik, a type of cheesecake made with a super-dense cheese, and babka: a light poundcake.

Interesting note on the żurek:

It is considered a staple dish of the Lent fast. You might know that Lent is the 40-day period leading up to Easter during which people give up... something.

This soup is not consumed in the course of the Easter Sunday celebration; rather, it is poured out – symbolizing how sick people are of it. During the rest of the year, people have no problem eating it; the dumping of it is just a part of Easter Sunday ritual.

Naturally, as in the west, eggs feature heavily in Easter celebrations in Poland.

Prior to going to church on Easter morning, Poles will enjoy a breakfast of hard-boiled eggs, cold cuts and breads, and possibly a slice of my favorite cake, the babka.

Most critically, a devout family’s table should be adorned with a cake or some sort of confection shaped like a lamb, to symbolize Christ’s place at the table. Even the butter may be sculpted into a lamb for the occasion.

Easter festivities end with a bang!

On Easter Monday, males will douse females with water; hence the appellation Wet Monday.

The reasons for this escapes me completely and every avenue of research I pursued, including asking friends and my Polish language teacher, yielded no answers.

Note: in these days of gender equality, females also douse males.

The weather is supposed to be spectacular on that day; nevertheless, I have no intention of leaving my house, lest I too get doused.

Sto Lat – the Birthday Celebration

Sto lat translates to ‘100 years’. In Poland, whether you are 1 or 100 years old, you are wished ‘sto lat’.

As it turns out, Luisa’s birthday was coming up and Ewelina and I were planning a blowout surprise.

In order to effectively participate, I had to hound the poor lady with questions: I had no idea what is and isn’t acceptable, culture-wise, for a birthday celebration in Poland.

In China, you mustn’t ever gift someone a watch, a knife – even if s/he is a collector of such, or a fancy lighter (if s/he is a smoker). All of these gifts symbolize ‘the end’: the watch counts down to the recipient’s death, the knife will surely sever the friendship and the lighter will render all to ash.

Polish superstition holds that one mustn’t gift shoes because the wearer will walk away from you, in case you were curious.

After having made that terrible gaffe of gifting Ewelina shoes for Christmas, albeit house shoes, I didn’t want to send the wrong message by getting Luisa a gift off the taboo list for her birthday.

Fortunately, the instructions were straightforward: a gift card from Sephora which my partner in crime and I went halfsies on, a card, some flowers and a cake.

That last was my own decision. Ewelina had asked, a while back, if I knew how to bake. Here, at last, an opportunity to prove my skills!

Heading to my local market in search of a birthday card....

Such greetings are a relatively new phenomenon in this country, as are Easter egg hunts and chocolate bunnies.

Whereas any store in America would have an aisle or two dedicated to a selection of cards for every occasion, here, such offerings might be found on a spinning rack similar to what you might find post cards on.

A lone spinning rack; not a row of them.

I found birthday cards for children easily enough; they were pastel-colored and generally identified with a number: 1, 2, 5... Luisa may be young at heart but I think it would have been insulting to label her a 3-year-old!

My friend is in fact quite beautiful and possessed of a strong sense of romance, so I wanted to find a card to complement her beauty. There were a bunch of cards with flowers, glitter and gauzy imagery, topped by the word Słub. Maybe one of those would do?

I had no idea what a słub was but the card were quite beautiful; almost worthy of my friend. However, aware of the risk of making another cultural gaffe, I was so grateful to find a card that actually said ‘Happy Birthday!’!

Plus, it had a sassy green envelope. Green is my favorite color; I felt the find was meant to be!

How glad I am that I did not buy any card that said Słub! Turns out, that unattractive-sounding word (swoob) means ‘wedding’. As Luisa is fervently hoping to get married at some point in her life; I might have conveyed the wrong message!

All in all, we had a fine time at the Irish Pub (which, incidentally, was playing American songs!)

I fought the impulse to sing along with Glen Campbell and Helen Reddy but could not resist launching into the Polish birthday song I worked so hard to learn:

Sto lat! Sto lat!                                         Hundred years! Hundred years!

Niech żeje, żeje nam!                               Let us have exactly that!

Sto lat! Sto lat!                                         Hundred years! Hundred years!

Niech żeje, żeje nam!                               Let us have exactly that!

Jeszcze teraz, jeszcze teraz:                     Once again, once again:

Niech żeje, żeje nam!                               Let us have exactly that!

Niech! żeje! Nam!                                     We’ll! Have! That!

A kto? A Luisa!                                          For who? For Luisa!

Here, Easter egg hunts, chocolate bunnies and greeting cards are all imports from a culture revered the world over. Surely you can guess which one!

And, in China, the Birthday Song, sung in Chinese, nevertheless follows the melody of the American birthday tune.

But not Poland.

This country has her own songs and her own traditions that, at least as of now, coexist with more popular, fashionable imports. How I hope that will continue!

The more I experience the culture of this country, the more I see that these people are not so much followers looking for the next big thing; they are unique on the global stage.

Their traditions and values, while arguably similar to other societies’, are expressed in a singular fashion that makes the privilege of living among such a people thought-provoking, engaging and humbling.