My Lithuanian Christmas

For the whole story about my Christmas break, check here.

Somethings change, but my Christmas experience has stayed pretty constant up until this year.  Granted, the people who join in our Wigilia celebration, Mass, and the after-Mass party changed as my cousins grew up, got married, had kids.  But, my parents and siblings were always there and things ALWAYS proceeded in the exact same manner.

Our Christmas dinner

So the decision to stay in Europe for Christmas was a very difficult one.  I had no idea what to expect out of my emotions or how Lithuanians celebrated Christmas, but I decided to take the plunge.  It's not every day that you get the chance to spend a major holiday in a different culture with family

Christmas Eve, Lithuanians celebrate a dinner very similar to Wigilia.  Some of the smaller superstitions are different...like back home, having an even number of dishes in bad luck.  However, in Lithuania, you have to have at least 12 dishes and everyone has to eat a little bit of each of them.  This led to me trying some interesting foods...like sledzik (pickled herring).  Overall though the foods are very similar and entirely delicious.

Similar to Poland, Lithuanians share oplatek at the beginning of the Christmas Eve dinner (for more on oplatek...see Wiki!).  Then we ate, drank, and talked!  Since the weather was very cold and my cousin has a three month old baby, the family didn't go anywhere.  There was still a ton of food though, and I helped cook a little bit too!

When dinner was wrapping up, we Skyped my dad and he did a Christmas shot with us and mom toasted with her tea.  Later that evening, I called back to say hi to the family that comes to my house for Wigilia.  It was great getting to talk to my cousins, Aunt Pat, and Uncle Jerry.  Even better was being there to share in the oplatek!  With my Christmas card to my parents, I sent a wafer and they shared it with everyone for me, and when they walked by the computer, I was given warm Christmas wishes.

On Christmas Day, the oldest son of the family I was staying with, Renatas, visited and brought his daughters.  I was very excited to meet Rugile and Radvile because on my previous trips to Lithuania I haven't had the chance to meet them.  After lunch, Renatas and his wife went to visit my grandfather's cousin, Micheslavas.  They invited me to go with them and so we drove out to Micheslavas's farm in the country.

When we got there, the place was filled with family!  Thus, my first few minutes were filled with lots of hugs and kisses.   Everyone sat around a table with...you guessed it...more food and alcohol.  A few weeks ago, my dad sent our Lithuanian family a Christmas card with oplatek in it.  So Regina, Micheslavas's daughter shared the oplatek with all of us.  So even though we were separated by around 5000 miles and a seven hour time difference, in a very round about method, my immediate family and I broke oplatek together!

The hardest part about being away from my family was probably when it came time to go to Mass.  The family I was staying with doesn't go to a midnight Mass because of the cold.  To be honest, I don't even know if there is a midnight Mass in Lithuanian Christmas tradition.  So, for the first time in 22 years I didn't go to Pasterka and instead woke up really early on Christmas Day to go to Mass.  Unfortunately, my cousin, Rita, didn't wake up in time to go with me, so I went to Mass alone.

At first, I was really sad about being in Mass by myself for Christmas, but then I remembered that even if no one in the Church could understand my English, we are all brothers and sisters because our birthright is the same, heaven.  It helped that the altar server was the spitting image of my little brother!

Photography by Armandas :)

The rest of Christmas Day was spent with playing with my younger cousins Armanda, Radvile, and Rugile!  We played a lot of computer games and some board games too!   One of the highlights of our fun were my Lithuanian lessons from Radville.  For seven years old, she was incredibly patient and taught me to count to 10, colors, shapes, and the Lithuanian alphabet.  I even had random “tests” to see if I remembered!  The alphabet and number lesson came in handy when we were playing the Lithuanian version of Battleship, although I had a cheat sheet stashed away.