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December 26, 2009
Carp nostalgia
I have missed the deadline.
My long-postponed (and long-awaited, so I fancied) carp story was meant for Christmas Eve, and now it's too late. Now it's time to dump the Christmas tree and reverse to normality. After all, the Oxford Street wonder sale is on, for Christ sake!
It was never much of a story, really, the carp tale - I just wanted to keep you on the hook, so to speak..
But here it is, anyway.
Vigilia (the Vigil Supper) is the main event of Polish Christmas. With the first star appearing on the sky we sit down at white-linen covered table and break bread, exchange good wishes, forgive and ask for forgiveness. There should be an extra cover for an unexpected guest. The thinking must have been that the homeless wanderer who knocks on your door could turn out to be Jesus, but nowdays it's just a very beautiful tradition signifying the belief that nobody should be alone on such night.
Twelve courses are supposed to be served ( I have yet to see it in practice!), there is no meat for technically it's still Advent, and so the main dish is carp.
Carp is considered by some a "dirty' fish; it's interesting what is dirty in different cultures - pork, mackerel, letting the dog lick you face? It can be prepared in myriad different ways, but it needs to be sexed-up rather than plain fried to be an exciting dish.
So far so good, and hardly controversial.
The darker truth was that the fish, in order to be fresh for the table, needed to be purchased in advance, alive and kicking, and - being a freshwater fish - kept in a bathtub until execution day, the Christmas Eve.
This drama was enacted in every home, up and down the country. A carp in the bathroom, children giving it a name, forming attachments, treating it as a pet. Until the day came when the father's (it was always the father - ask any Pole) job was to kill the carp. Stunning it with a hammer being the prefered method, first you had to seize the slimy creature with your hands and trying to keep the crying kids away from the scene, do the deed with manly sense of purpose.
What traumatic effect this ritualised annual slaughter had on our young psyches, I dare not speculate.
Nowdays, of course, it's all sanitised and easy. Carp is bought gutted, sliced and shrink-wrapped in a supermarket, like everything else.
But I feel nostalgic for the Christmases of my childhood..
Posted by Marzena at December 26, 2009 08:05 PM