FORD CITY — Take some dried beans, add sauerkraut and, of course, generous helpings of pierogi and haddock, and above all, don't forget the sticks and straw, and “presto!” You have wigilia, a Polish Christmas Eve dinner.
There are other foods, too, such as potatoes, barley and peas, rice and prunes. But what about the sticks and straw?
Karen Kioski and her daughter, Allison Abbey, explained that gathering sticks on Christmas Eve, just after the first star appears, is a custom carried out by young unmarried girls. If the stick is long and skinny, their husband to be will be tall and slender. If the stick is short and stubby, well, the picture is clear.
To date, Allison has a collection of 15 sticks, the first one picked for her by her grandmother when she was three months old. All the sticks are tall and skinny.
The straw, Kioski explained, is placed on the dinner table to represent the manger in which the baby Jesus was placed. Kioski has special straw sent to her mother from Poland. She keeps it in an envelope and every year it graces her Dec. 24th dinner table.
“Our meal starts with sauerkraut soup,” Kioski explained. “That's followed by servings of all kinds of beans, pinto, lima, navy and string beans. Even if you don't like certain beans you have to take just one. You cut it in half and eat one half and leave the other half on your plate. After the beans are taken away we have the pierogi and fish and again; you eat one-half of what is on your plate. Every serving is eaten with fried onions. That gives some flavor to the beans. There are 12 servings in all, and my mother explained that they represent the 12 apostles.”
It also is a Polish custom to set out extra plates for those who are not at the dinner and in Kioski's case, a plate will be set out in memory of her father, who died about two years ago.
