Englishman Reacts to... Wigilia: Why Poland celebrates Christmas Eve with 12 dishes

[@MatthewJoseph67]

Merry Christmass Rob, thank you for content that you do. Please don't stop !

[@monikamatuszkiewicz2307]

in the old Slavic tradition, 12 dishes appear on the table, and the additional cover was for the spirits of the ancestors. Fortune was told from the hay under the tablecloth - whoever pulls out the longest straw will have the best year

[@WojciechKuakowski]

Merry Christmas Rob! Why 12 dishes? An old tradition. There has to be something from the meadow/field, from the forest, from the river and from the orchard. Hence, mushrooms, dried fruit, carp, potatoes, etc.

[@PaulinaLipińska-o2e]

Hello Rob, you have very nice jumper. Today on Christmas Eve we are going to have: fruit compote, krokiety with mashroom, pierogi, cabbage with mushroom, carp, mirin, cod, herring, mushroom in linseed oil, beetrot barszcz and sweet makowiec, sernik, miodownik. And it all together gives 12 dishes I think. Happy Christmas to Everyone ❤

[@TheNewbStyle]

The lack of fish in tub is due to some law regulations banning selling living fish. Merry Christmas

[@olliet4264]

We have a very small celebration at home, so we stick to the tradition by counting things like bread, potatoes, butter, even salt 😅 we can’t otherwise stick to it and we want to - it’s just a fun tradition that reminds me of the family who’s no longer with us. Half of my family believes, half doesn’t, but those traditions have morphed from religious to cultural and family for us :) Merry Christmas, Rob!

[@marialada509]

🎄 Piękna jest radość w Święta . Ciepłe są myśli o bliskich . Niech pokój , miłość i szczęście otoczy dziś nas wszystkich . Zdrowych Wesołych Świąt Bożego Narodzenia oraz dużo szczęścia w Nowym Roku 2025 życzę nam wszystkim.🎄 Jak nakazuje nasza polska tradycja wirtualnie dzielę się z Wami wszystkimi opłatkiem . Dla tych co nie wiedzą to tylko my Polacy mamy taką tradycję .Katolicy w Stanach nie znają tego i czasem przejmują od nas te piękną tradycje .🎄

[@janrudnicki6111]

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

[@danielchudini77]

Merry Christmas 🎉 Wesołych Świąt 😊

[@fiona9047]

Rob! Wesołych Świąt, żebyś odpoczął. 😊

[@wojstube9359]

Wow! This jumper 👍🙌👏 Merry Christmas Rob!!!

[@damikk]

Merry Christmas Rob 🎄from Łódź 🌠🎄

[@anyas2002]

In Poland, we start the Celebration of Christmas, and we recognize St Stephens Day as the second day of Christmas. On Christmas Day we do loads of most dishes and other desserts. So the food is bountiful.

[@pani_oko6122]

Merry Christmas Rob, Cheers 🎄🎄

[@PrzemysawPustuka]

Merry Christmas

[@unreal10048]

Merry Christmas Rob❤🎅🎄

[@kasiagrita3288]

Merry Christmas 🎄 Happy New Year 🍾🤩

[@Marna73]

Wesołych Świąt !! 🎄 🎄 🎄

[@siejac7894]

Merry Christmas🎄 I'm only eat pierogi, bigos and mushroom soup on Wigilia. I don't it fishes.

[@pawelkrasicki6618]

Wesołych świąt 🎄🎄🎄

[@alh6255]

Vodka is drunk on Christmas Eve in few Polish homes (and if so, it is rather a colorful flavored vodka or some fruit liqueur), if there is alcohol, it is rather wine or honey (Slavic alcohol based on honey, in Polish tradition has many types) or beer, e.g. mulled beer with cloves and other spices.

[@lidiapoczyczynska6623]

Wesołych świąt ❄️🎄☃️🎄❄️

[@kroll01]

Wesołych Świąt :)

[@GreycatRademenes]

I'd call myself fairly religious person, but my definition of Christmas is mostly: We all agreed to be happy in this time. As for the dishes, my family isn't that big so we stick to a 'modified' list of dishes, which I believe most people do nowadays, but there's always around 12 ^^

[@trzynastka88]

Merry Christmas☃️🌲❄️🎁🙂

[@alh6255]

Some dishes are associated with specific meanings related to events from the life of Christ. Others are simply tradition. It is important in Poland to eat Lenten dishes during Christmas Eve dinner. In total, if you count dried fruit compote (also a Polish Christmas Eve tradition) or starters and side dishes, a special sweet bread called challah - "chałka" (eaten on special days by Poles and Polish Jews, and now also Jews in Israel or in the USA in families of former Polish Jews) as a dish, then it is easy to reach a minimum of 12 traditional dishes, or even more than 20. For example: 1 red borscht with "uszka" (tiny, extremely delicate and very tasty dumplings with forest mushrooms) or mushroom soup (from forest mushrooms) or turtle soup (traditional on Christmas Eve among Polish nobility, my grandmother ate it every Christmas Eve in her childhood, before the war) 2. boiled sauerkraut with peas and cumin or boiled sauerkraut with forest mushrooms and cumin - - both dishes are very delicate, aromatic and tasty 3. traditional vegetable salad with mayonnaise 4-7. appetizers, additions to other dishes (such as pickled cucumbers, marinated plums, marinated (or in sweet marinade) pumpkin, specially prepared boiled beetroot with horseradish, spicy and delicious. 8-9 - at least two types of herring from 2 aromatic groups: pickled and in oil dressing herrings (and there may be more) plus boiled potatoes in their skins 10. carp in aspic or fried carp, or both 11. Dried fruit compote 12. challah- chałka 14-18 - cakes and coffee, tea. And there may also be kutia (its base is wheat grains, honey, poppy seeds), delicate pasta with poppy seeds and honey as well as with nuts and almonds, other Christmas Eve fish, such as trout or pike (e.g., a dish called "pike in the Polish style", known since the 15th century, made in gingerbread spice), and of course cakes, such as gingerbread, poppy seed cake and cheesecake with raisins, nuts and almonds (traditional Polish Christmas cakes).

[@Minnakht23]

I like how the captions spruced up the chef's speech at 1:15. What he actually said is more like "These dishes- there's actually twelve dishes, which according to some traditions, there's- there should be twelve dishes on the Christmas Eve table. Each dish corresponds to one month of the year." He doesn't actually mention the Last Supper at all.

[@m44g5]

Ale sekundę później wspomina o tym obraz Ostatniej Wieczerzy.

[@alh6255]

Actually, he mentioned the Last Supper a a moment later

[@Minnakht23]

​@@alh6255The one mentioning the Last Supper a moment later is the narrator, not the chef, right?

[@mypointofview1111]

About 10 years ago I decided to push stomachs to the nth and makes & eat as many dishes as we could muster at Wigilia. The white flag of surrender went up at the 9th dish. I've pared it back to 4 or 5 dishes now and that's manageable both in terms of time taken to prep, cook & serve the food but also in terms of the wasteline. There's a bit more room for Christmas lunch the next day as well and the whole experience is better

[@janrudnicki6111]

The fish is also a symbol of the first Christians. The Apostles were fishermen before Christ called them.

[@HALBiSSGames]

Merry christmas 4:00 its more like WE WAS ANGRY ON EACH OTHER 2 HOURS AGO BUT NOW - crack this ,,oplatek,, (i forgot translation xd) and - zycze ci zdrowia szczęścia pomyślności i dużo radości AND THATS IT and to anorher member of family

[@HALBiSSGames]

I was hating trat tradition but now I LIKE IT why BECAUSE IM ADDING MY WORDS - to my mother ŻYCZĘ CI SPOKOJU BYŚ SIĘ WKOŃCU WYSPAŁA I MNIEJ MARUDZIŁA NA RESZTĘ RODZINY - to father - OBYŚ WBIŁ MASTERA W LOLU (master in lol) ZDAŁ SZKOŁĘ I ZNALAZŁ WKOŃCU JAKĄŚ DZIEWCZYNĘ (meet a girl in ,,polish styl,, haha) AND THATS WHY I LIKE THIS😅😅 because i can say BECAUSE OF TRADITION what i want yo say 🙂😂

[@mirekbarszcz1432]

Witaj ROB. Napisze tak że karp nie musi być na wigilie ale u mnie jest plus inna ryba. Potrawy są takie same ale trochę się różnią zależy od regionu POLSKI. W moim są tradycyjne staropolskie .WESOŁYCH ŚWIAT.

[@Minnakht23]

The Christmas Eve Supper has two restrictions when it comes to preparing it: There should be no non-fish meat, and there should be twelve dishes. The definition of what is a distinct "dish" is pretty loose, though - the three ways of preparing herring at the restaurant in the video are three separate dishes. There is no specific list of mandatory dishes, but some are common. Some form of carp is traditional, as you said yourself, through people seldom keep a live one in their bathtub for a few days before Christmas Eve. Some form of herring is common, as herring is widely available for purchase. Barszcz z uszkami is traditional. Some form of pierogi is traditional, typically with a cabbage and mushroom filling because that one is guaranteed to be meat-free. The dried fruit kompot is traditional, it's a drink. The list of twelve dishes includes dessert, so the poppy seed roll and kutia are traditional. That's seven. Some everyday recipes can be modified to be meatless for Christmas Eve. Meatless żurek, meatless gołąbki (cabbage leaves wrapped around a filling - the meatless filling tends to be kasha and mushrooms), meatless croquettes (crepe-wrapped filling). Some classic recipes are already meatless, like salad Olivier or coulibiac. There's also Greek-style fish (not sure if any Greek person has ever heard of it), there's stewed cabbage with pease, there's mushroom soup, there's multiple ways of preparing carp or herring, and you can say that the basket of sliced bread served on the supper table is a dish. There's more than twelve possibilities, so households could change their menu from year to year if they wanted - the lady at 7:21 wouldn't as she clearly has things figured out, but the option exists. It's kind of funny how the restriction to fish at most has shaken out. In medieval times, fish were common and land animals were more precious - hunting down a game bird or slaughtering a chicken were acts of luxury that your feudal lord could've been leery of, not to mention slaughtering pigs or cattle. The first crowned king of Poland, Bolesław the Brave, stressed the importance of fasting a lot, to the point of punishing fast-breakers by sending his men to knock their teeth out by force. The point was to be humble and refrain from luxuries - and now, in the modern day, some fish tend to be quite expensive, and yet there's no issue with slamming down a hunk of salmon on the Christmas Eve table - it's fish, so it fits within the restrictions.

[@TodayTomorrowMusick]

because the tradition of 12 dishes comes from us Slavs, and Christians appropriated it like many other traditions

[@anioł_aural]

Szczodrych godów. Niech się darzy.

[@andrzejsy]

why you choose Katowice?

[@RobReacts1]

It had the best flight times, it was the cheapest to get to , and it's somewhere different we haven't been

[@annawegier647]

Wesołych Świąt Rob! Czy wierzysz czy nie..to są święta Bożego Narodzenia. Nie wiem dlaczego świętują to ludzie niewierzący...pewnie po prostu dla nich to dzień spotkania z rodziną i miła tradycja.

[@RobReacts1]

That's it. A day off work. And it's just 'what you do'

[@m44g5]

Jaki to dziwny pomysł program o tradycyjnych daniach, lecz w restauracji? Dobrze, że chociaż kogoś z ulicy zapytali.

[@wosp5137]

Even if you don't believe in God (like me), the wafer is a symbol of forgiveness and reconciliation. So in my opinion, this is the most beautiful symbol of Christmas.

[@kulkagelo9896]

ROB PYTANIE SKĄD JESTES I JAKĄ RELIGIE WYZNAJESZ?

[@konradinho94]

Z Anglii jest i nawet mówił że jest ateista

[@RobReacts1]

South England and I don't believe in any religion

[@margaretkelly221]

North-West for my husband of 18 years and I'm from Gdańsk 😊​@RobReacts1

[@hegemon8]

I can't stand that: We don't eat meat in wigilia. And fish is damn plant? But thanks to EU and tax reasons, snail is a fish now... Anyways... Happy Christmas to You and Charlie. Thanks for video.

[@a.j.s.7312]

There is no meat on Christmas Eve, because is the last evening of the Advent Lent - dishes are made of fish, mushrooms, poopy seeds, cheese, beetroot, cabbage etc. In the past those dishes were very cheap and easy to afford for poor people. Anyone could just go for fishing at the river or lake. Most homes Carp, Herring, Sardines, Salmon (Tuna?) is must appear on the table. This evening dinner is to waiting for Jesus to be born. Lots of families are going to the church for the special service at middle of the night. If that is no available then they need to go for two separate Masses on 24th and 25th of Dec. 25th is first day of Christmas and people can eat meat. Some of traditions are adapted to Christianity from pagan times and Slavs had many traditions and beliefs. Without those customs there will be no Catholic Church in Poland. Best example and explanation are included in “Dziady” by Adam Mickiewicz.

[@1942rommel]

12 apostołów = 12 dań

[@TodayTomorrowMusick]

tak was nauczyli ale to nie prawda , My Słowianie jedlismy n12 dań na długo długo wczesniej zanim wasza religia została wymyslona

[@janrudnicki6111]

Christ is historical figure it was proo by professor of History.

[@LadyRebel_666]

12 monkeys xd

[@kulkagelo9896]

OBEJRZYJ WIGILIA GORNY SLASK

[@irenawozniak703]

Wesołych Świąt Rob❤❤❤

[@magorzatacharczynska5656]

Why do you wear a Christmas sweater if you are an atheist and don't believe? Christmas is the celebrate birth of Jesus Christ. And if you don't believe in him, This is weird and doesn't make any sense❤

[@RobReacts1]

Well it's now just tradition for family and friends getting together, giving gifts etc. you do realise that if there was a jesus of Nazareth that he wasn't actually born on December 25th right??

[@magorzatacharczynska5656]

@RobReacts1 You cannot explain the word of faith to an atheist. To believe is not to know, not to see, but to believe.

[@RobReacts1]

@magorzatacharczynska5656 I prefer facts and evidence.

[@magorzatacharczynska5656]

@@RobReacts1 atheists made up the idea that they wanted to meet their family and get gifts, which is ridiculous to me. and I may think about it differently, sorry.

[@magorzatacharczynska5656]

@RobReacts1 May God bless you and your wife on this celebration of the birth of Jesus🫶

[@manierwarsaw9820]

Twelve Months Twelve Asterix's works Ocean's Twelve |

[@grazynaborysow7072]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/eHK9g6eVfNSDeLMsi=XpRX3UuwdslUYtwX Pozdrawiam serdecznie, na pewno to Cię zainteresuje 👋

[@aniaszymanska6070]

Merry Christmas 🎉 Wesołych Świąt 😊