Today is the Orthodox Christmas Eve, and I thought this would be the appropriate thread to share this. I'm of Slovak descent on my mother's side, and her parent's (whom I never never met) were born in the foothills of the Carpathian mountains in what was then Austria-Hungry, and spoke a Russian-tinged dialect of Slovak. The liturgy of the church they attended, and the one they and my mother and her relatives continued to attend in Perth Amboy, NJ, (St, John's), used a "Church Slavonic" liturgy, which was a sort of Russian/Slovak . Thus we called the Julian calendar (Greek Catholic) celebration of Christmas on January 7, "Russian Christmas." My mother converted to Roman Catholic when she married my Dad, but every year when I was a boy we'd go over to my Aunt Annie's house to celebrate Russian Christmas Eve with traditional ethnic foods like stuffed-cabbage,
bobalky (little baked bread-balls mixed with either sauerkraut or poppy-seed 'n' honey), mushroom soup, and
roshki (special cookies filled with lekvar, or apricot and nuts). We'd eat dinner, and then sit and sing around the table. And my Uncle Andy, of full-blooded Russian descent, would sing Christmas carols in Russian with my Mother and her relatives, and play his harmonica like the whole soul of ancient Russia was pouring through it. Since this was all so detached from the commercial accoutrements of the Dec. 25th Christmas, I got a sense of what a simple family Christmas was like before all the material clatter. And one thing my Uncle Andy always used to say is, "It always snows for Russian Christmas!" And, you know, 99% of the time throughout my life, he's been right!
So now, before, I join my mother for a Russian Christmas Eve dinner she homecooked...
bobalky and mushroom soup, and the traditional honey 'n' clove of garlic on bread to begin...I'd like to wish all our Orthodox friends out there a Merry Christmas!
