In a Polish house, Christmas does not begin on the morning of the twenty-fifth. It begins when a child at the window sees the first star.
Before the soup there is a thin wafer called opłatek. You break it with everyone at the table and you say, if you can, “Forgive me.” Under the cloth there is hay, because the Child’s first bed was straw. The meal is meatless, and it takes a long time, which is part of the point. And there is always one place that no one is meant to use — a plate and a chair for the wanderer, for the dead, for the one who could not come home, and for the Lord who still knocks.
This little book explains the night that almost nobody stops to explain. It is for families who have kept the customs without quite knowing why, and for anyone who would like to begin in a rented kitchen far from home. Bethlehem had no room. A Christian table can write a different ending in advance.
A Silent Homilies booklet. Written to be read in one or two sittings.