Christmas Eve in Czech Silesia
Christmas Eve in Těšín Silesia (Těšínsko)
In Těšínsko Christmas Eve was vilija. Poor homes ate potatoes with buttermilk, peas or beans, rye semolina with honey and butter, wafers with honey, nuts and fruit; better-off homes added cabbage, rice or semolina with gingerbread, and fish. The leftovers — ščedroky — were wrapped in the tablecloth and kept until St Stephen’s Day.
On Morávka the cows got their own Christmas bake, pohnutka, kneaded from a little of everything bought at the village shop, and the table legs were girded with a chain “so that the household’s legs would not ache”. Christmas Eve tables in Cieszyn Silesia carried twenty or thirty kinds of tiny cookies — the more the better.
Bake many kinds of small Christmas biscuits rather than a few big ones — in Těšínsko, the more kinds, the better the year.