Tuesday, January 06, 2004
The snow patters upon your face, aided by soft movements of the breeze. The streets grow quieter as you head for home, until there is only the remote sound of flakes accumulating and the beats of your heart, furiously circulating warmth to chilled extremities. The brilliance of Gwiazdka, the first Christmas Star, paints everything in somber hues that bespeak of family, friends… and love.
So what the heck are you doing in Warsaw?
In this, our Advent season of impending EU membership, the numbers of expatriots trickling into Warsaw increase daily. We have wives, families and jobs… Poland’s our new home.
Or is it? Some of us have left all loved ones behind; in the cross-cultural smorgasbord that is Christmas, Hannukah, Ramadan and Kwanza, being alone can be oppressive. If you’ve recently arrived to pursue a new career, or your significant other has just skipped town, and the old familiar faces are a thousand miles away, then what do you do here in the City of Big Brotherly Love?
The obvious choice is to wait until Christmas Eve, then knock on a random citizen’s door. There’s an age-old tradition in Poland that the Christchild will appear as a stranger at the door on the eve of His birthday, and many families set an extra space at the table. Christianity has always leaned upon the image of Christ as the unlooked-for (and possibly odoriferous) stranger; in Poland they’ve boiled that perhaps unsavory notion down to a single annual event. So don’t be shy: the grandest spirit of all may be moving within you.
Polish Christmas fetes are unquestionably among the planet’s most family-oriented. Poles are exceedingly warm and loving, having learned to do so within a Communist-instilled-atmosphere of fear and distrust – an astounding feat. They learned to eat, drink and be merry in private, if not in secret, and those old habits die hard.
In my quest to find those covert celebrations, I’ve spoken to dozens of gracious souls. All advise the same: find yourself a family to break bread together. Locals may shy from the uninvited dinner guest, but many would be gratified to extend a plateful of pierogi and sledzie to the new arrival in their workplace, church, or - if you’re really lucky and have abounding interpersonal skills - neighborhood. And if you think you don’t know anyone well enough to wrangle a dinner invite or share a Midnight Mass, there are a number of organizations which will help you find some company. Uh, the platonic kind, of course.
Listen to Pastor Ed Broke of the Open Door Christian Fellowship: “My wife and I were in the military,” he relates, “and know about being away from family…. We open our church and our home this holiday season to anyone in need.” Warsaw International Church has the usual lineup of prayer services and carols, and also visit orphanages on December 7th and 14th “to celebrate the season with them. We welcome everyone! As Christmas gets closer, small groups will make plans for meals or a ride in the countryside.”
Rabbi Joseph Kanofsky can help you find food, friends and prayer all eight days of Hannukah, Alcoholics Anonymous conduct English meetings every day of the year. And the Safari Club aids Warsaw women in search of cultural and sporting enlightenment. The Canadian Circle also puts together a Christmas fest. If you like to run, walk, and/or socialize, contact the Warsaw Hash House Harriers or Warsaw’s Family Hash House Harriers, (though you better hear what an HHH is from their own lips) which are both planning Christmas get-togethers. The American Ambassador invites those with nothing to do to his home on Thanksgiving and Christmas, but it helps if you’re an Embassy employee. And the British embassy has a dues-free pub open to all, which meets every Friday.
Naturally a few personal stories stand out: Mike McMillian hails from NYC and is a teacher at the International American School in Kabaty. “I’m different than most,” he confides, “I spend Christmas Day in isolation… internally preparing for the coming year, celebrating the call for harmony that is Kwanza, exploring that which is Divine in all peoples.” Mike is abundantly sociable and accessible, but Christmastime is his time to refresh and recharge... a welcome change from the commercialized bustle he left behind.
Grzegorz Semenowicz, on the other hand, is a recovering expatriot. Pure Polak, he’s lived most of his life in the UK. For now he’s back on homesoil, and a few years ago he and his girlfriend trekked to a village south of Kraków to spend the holidays with a family she knew. Greg was the only guy there.
“They cried all the time,” he laments. “It was a bit awkward.” I ventured that someone close to them must’ve died. “I guess so,” Greg continues. “I didn’t really want to ask, ‘Oh, now what?’ I mean, they would break the op³atek and then break into tears. And we were snowbound in that house for three days.” Ouch.
On another Christmas Eve, Greg was in a small hostel when a wayfaring stranger blew in with the wind a minute to twelve – the 13th person to join their merry band. “Some of the guests were terrified. I think they thought he really was the devil. But after a few hours they calmed down.”
Tom Melcher’s tale is best: he saw a talking donkey on a dimly-lit mountain village avenue. Midnight Mass – which has been virtually banned in the States because too many drunks kept crashing the party – in Poland is called Pasterka, or Shepherd’s Watch. While the congregations pray, the Holy Dove is said to descend upon our domestic animals and grant them power of speech. But only the pure of heart can hear them. Tom hadn’t been pure of anything that night, and had a local pastor in the States seen him at that miraculous moment, he may have barred the doors.
But if you’ve nothing else to do you may want to wander down to a live manger scene and give it a go. Sit placidly in the snow and… who knows? Or better still, maybe a talking donkey will come rap-rap-rapping at your door on the 24th. And start a discussion on how lonely it is to be stuck in Warsaw while all his donkey friends are home munching hay in Minnesota.
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