Twelve Images of Christmas -- #11

Christmas Eve dinner in Polish homes is the celebration of the Wigilia, the Vigil. Dinner gets started by sharing bits of these wafers, oplatki, with your family. They're made of the same stuff as a communion wafer and may be plain or, like these, embossed with a scene. The dinner itself is traditionally meatless, but as the elders got older in our family the rules were changed on the fly. When I was a small boy, the main entree was perch. The kids complained, so french fried shrimp was added. Over time, the perch disappeared, the shrimp got top billing, and then one day Grandpa decided that polish sausage was acceptable, partly because he had made it himself. Mushroom soup, using incredibly costly imported dried mushrooms, has also been a headline item for the Wigilia dinner.