My favourite festival.
We have quite a lot of festivals here in Poland but the most popular one is Christmas and it is my favourite festival, too. Christmas is on 25 December and it is the time when the Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Crist.
My family starts preparing for Christmas in the middle of December. We send Christmas cards to our family and friends. We also look for Christmas gifts. Each member of our family gets a gift from the others so the pile of packets under the Christmas tree is really huge. A few days before Christmas my father buys a tall Christmas tree and stores it on our balcony. It waits there until all the celebrations start.
In Poland we start celebrating Christmas on 24 December and this day is called the Christmas Eve. Then there is Christmas Day and finally we have the Second Day of Christmas on 26 December.
On Christmas Eve morning the youngest person in the family (that is me) has to decorate the Christmas tree. I decorate it with special electric candles, colourful balls and chains made of silver and gold paper. I also put some candies and red apples on the tree. At the top of the tree there is a big star with a little bulb inside. My father made it when I was five. While I decorate the tree my sister helps my mother in the kitchen. They prepare traditional Polish Dishes for the Christmas Eve Supper. We eat some of these dishes only once a year – just on this special evening.
The tradition says that there must be twelve dishes on the Christmas Eve table. We usually have even one more. We eat borsch – a soup made of beetroots – and carp. Carp can be fried, roast or boiled. It can also be served cold in a special jelly. We also eat gołąbki (this dish does not have an English name); they are made from cabbage leaves stuffed with rice and mushrooms and served with a delicious mushroom sauce. We have other things like salad, peas and cabbage, cakes, etc. On this special day we mustn’t eat meat. After supper we sing Christmas carols and afterwards we unwrap our gifts. There is a lot of noise and laughter at this time and this is my favourite moment.
On Christmas morning we all go to church. Then we go far for a very long walk. Afterwards we go to my Grandma’s and we eat Christmas dinner. My sister and me sit at a separate table with all my cousins – this table is only for young people. In the afternoon our parents talk with the rest of the family and my sister and me play with our cousins. We have a lot of fun but my father says we are too noisy. In the evening we come back home and watch television. On this day we are allowed to watch TV till late at night.
On the second day of Christmas we visit some friends or they visit us. We eat, talk and play games like Scrabble or Monopoly. Then we watch television again. I like Christmas very much because it is a very joyful festival. Everybody is happy and relaxed. There is a lot of delicious food and what is more important I get many wonderful presents!
