Folk Christmas Eve Cuisine

Is it possible to host a vegan Christmas Eve? Absolutely — and it can be fully in line with Polish holiday tradition. Much more so than the Western-inspired habit of serving roasted poultry for Christmas Eve dinner.

If we look deeper into history — and also deeper into society — we see a culinary reality that is very different from what films from Hollywood or WFFiD present. And this issue isn’t just culinary; it touches the very foundations of historical policy.

For long decades, history was the history of the wealthiest families. Recently, I came across a book about the beginnings of German statehood… and it was my biggest reading disappointment of the year.
 The entire book was basically: “Duke A allied with Duke B against Duke C, who, with papal support, crowned himself and allied with King D, and together they attacked Duke E.”

Whenever I read that kind of thing, all I can think about is the townsfolk under siege, or peasants whose crops were trampled by armies… people who are almost completely absent from textbooks and films.

When I was in school, we learned about the Feast at Wierzynek. However, no one mentioned that this was when “orszada” (a very popular term in the interwar period) emerged in Poland, nor was there any mention of what townsfolk or peasants — comprising at least 90% of the population — ate and how they lived. And this was in the PRL, where theoretically folk history should have been emphasized.

The incomparable Professor Dumanowski is doing wonderful work reviving the oldest Polish recipes and cookbooks, but naturally, he is limited to the cuisine of the top 1%. The earliest written recipes come from magnate and royal courts.

So what was the cuisine of the poor — the 90%? Did Poland have its own cucina povera?

Yes and no.

There are no written sources at all about peasant or urban-poor cookery. Recipes were passed solely by word of mouth.
 What’s fascinating, especially in the context of Christmas Eve or other holidays, is that the “lady of the house” prepared dishes entirely from memory!
 I write down everything — quantities, ingredients, procedures — on paper or in my tablet, and they hold it all in their heads… damn. Respect to the women of the old households!

But many dishes have survived in family traditions and in early 20th-century collections of “economical cooking.” The oldest dishes, from the time of the first Piasts, were reconstructed by archaeologists, the Lis family.

This was an almost entirely plant-based cuisine. Peasants and the poor ate meat rarely. The widespread availability of meat and dairy is a phenomenon of the last 100 years.
 In Poland, it arrived with the era of workplace and school canteens in the PRL — with pork chops and meat patties. Similar developments happened throughout the “developed world.” In postwar Western Europe, during the “social-democratic compromise,” the living standards of the working class rose, and workers began eating meat, which was synonymous with prosperity.

But if we look at recipes from before that meat boom, we find dishes like cauliflower or potato cutlets, bean cutlets, or groch z kapustą (peas and cabbage).
This is likely what our peasant ancestors might have eaten on Christmas Eve.

Polish — or really any — cucina povera, folk peasant cuisine, may not have been fully plant-based, but it was dominated by plants. Today, we would call it flexitarian. Out of necessity.
 Everyday meals were vegetarian, plant-based, and meat appeared only occasionally, on holidays.

And even then, meat was often used in such a way that a small amount fed an entire family or village — for example, in dumplings. The most important miracle of St. Hyacinth (Św. Jacek) was feeding an entire village with a small piece of meat — hence he is associated with dumplings. I remember that from childhood.

Pierogi are an excellent example of a Polish plant-based, traditional, folk dish — served with flaxseed oil.
 Five hundred years ago, your ancestors and mine were probably scarfing down such pierogi from one shared bowl.

This is traditional Polish plant-based — and deeply Christmas-related — cuisine. In its festive, richer form.

Christmas Eve cuisine also includes dishes that were rarely made at other times, such as kutia.

Among the poor, there were no elaborate fish-based culinary illusions on the Christmas table — and often no fish at all.

Here is an important point: game and fish from wild waters were the property — like all land — of the king, who granted rights to the aristocracy. Catching fish or hunting, and sometimes even gathering herbs in the forest, could carry the death penalty for “stealing the lord’s property.”

There were, of course, exceptions — some villages had access to their own stream or woodland — and Kraków, as far as I recall, received a royal privilege for townsfolk to catch fish. But in general, peasants had extremely limited access to wild animal protein, even on Christmas Eve.

And with the stricter fasting rules in Poland than in Western Europe, not only meat but also dairy products were forbidden on Christmas Eve.

In practice, traditional Polish Christmas Eve Folk Cuisine was plant-based.

And as with all traditions, there’s no sense in locking ourselves inside what existed 200–300 years ago. We should create new interpretations using modern techniques and ingredients.
 Cuisine is not a museum — it is alive only when it changes with each dish, each chef, and each Christmas Eve.

Thus, a modern, 100% plant-based interpretation of Christmas Eve cuisine is, paradoxically, a return to the roots of this tradition.

A tradition with enormous untapped cultural potential. Polish Christmas Eve cuisine is a massive, unused Polish soft power.