Many have no doubt heard the story about a syncretistic Christmas display in a Japanese department store that featured a prominent figure of a jolly Santa Claus hanging from a cross. This is likely to be an urban legend but, like many such urban legends, it has wide currency.
Even if the story is true, in a country where fewer than one percent of the people are Christian and, therefore, unfamiliar with Western religious customs and traditions, the odd -- even ghoulish -- pairing of St. Nick and a crucifix can be forgiven as the result of a good-natured desire to be welcoming of foreigners and their beliefs despite ignorance of what we might call "the true meaning of Christmas."
It's a bit harder to be so lenient with residents of a majority-Christian country like the United States, where even non-believers are familiar enough with Christmas customs that they are unlikely to commit religious faux pas.
So I was shocked, to say the least, when I found this item in the clearance aisle of K-mart two days after Easter Sunday: a "Happy Easter Candy Cross" from the R.M. Palmer Company.
Now, I come from a family where Easter breakfast included meticulously-sculpted "butter lambs" made by my grandmother, but they were (to mix a metaphor) cut from the same cloth as dyed-and-labeled-by-name eggs and a basketful of breads, ham, Polish sausage, and horseradish blessed by the priests at St. Hyacinth's, an ethnic Polish parish on the south side of Milwaukee.
Yet when I see a decorated chocolate cross, ready to crunch and mouth-meltable, only one word comes to mind: sacrilege.
Is my reaction a Catholic thing? Do I misconstrue the intentions of something that claims to be "America's Favorite Holiday Candy"? Is my comparison to the crucified Santa out of place?
Next thing you know, they'll be selling lighter-than-air cotton candy to celebrate Ascension Thursday.
This past weekend on public radio's A Prairie Home Companion, Broadway director and actor Walter Bobbie reminisced about celebrating Christmas in a Polish-American family in Scranton, Pennsylvania (when Scranton was known more for coal mining than for Dunder-Mifflin paper products) during the 1950s and '60s.
Bobbie's memories described something remarkably close to the Christmas traditions practiced by my own Polish-American family in Milwaukee in the 1960s and '70s.
For instance, Bobbie told the radio audience about the sharing of opłatki (singular: opłatek), a flat wafer similar to the host served at Communion. He noted that his family members would send opłatki in Christmas cards (as did members of my family who would be far away at Christmas time), and that on Christmas Eve, family members would break off a piece and give it to each other, along with a greeting of "Christ's peace." They might, he said, dip it in honey. (We did not include honey in our ritual.)
Little or no food had been eaten during the day. All waited for the most significant moment of the entire Wigilia [vigil] supper, the breaking and sharing of the opłatek. The host and hostess enacted the ancient rite of the opłatek, facing one another each holding an opłatek, each breaking and sharing a part of the other's. They embraced warmly and expressed their love by wishing for each other, a fulfillment of their deepest yearnings. Then they broke and shared the opłatek with each one present, with messages of love (sometimes in rhyme) of good health, happiness, and an untroubled life, for one to be as sweet as the springtime and to live do dosiego roku, to live as long as "Dosia" lived. She was reputed to be many years over a hundred when she died, jolly and alert to the end, but no one could be found who knew her. The hostess performed a special task when she shared her opłatek with all those present. Besides the good wishes and love, she expressed without words that she would share her bread with those present here, should they be in need, just as she herself sould be willing to take from them, should her position be reversed.
The opłatek, frail, perishable, has for all Poles a mystical meaning which cannot be explained logically. At Christmas time it is sent to absent members and close friends in strange lands, who in their loneliness, partake of it, as of communion with their loved ones at home.
The opłatek, of little monatery value, is the treasured link that brings warm memories of Poland to her children settled in different parts of the world. Losing reality for the moment, they once again dream that they are seated with the family at the Wilia table, enjoying the blessing, forgiveness and warmth of those under the parental roof. At the time of this writing, it can be obtained from the nuns in the convents of America where a large number are of Polish ancestry.
Bobbie also said that dinner on Christmas Eve in his home was austere: fried herring, cabbage soup, and prunes for dessert. (This elicited groans from the audience at Town Hall in New York.) I am happy to say that this was not the tradition in my family by the time I was born (my dad usually brought home a bucket of chicken from Dutchland Dairy to spare my mother the task of cooking), but it is similar to the Christmas meal prepared by my great-grandfather and described to me years later by my mother: scrambled eggs, fish, and -- yes! -- prunes for dessert.
Finally, Bobbie said, after the early evening rituals, he and his family crowded into a car and traveled from house to house, starting with the youngest uncle until they ended up at his Uncle Johnny's place in Jersey City.
I thought I was listening to a recitation of my own childhood Christmas memories.
When I was growing up, Christmas Eve was the big affair and Christmas Day, as pleasant as it was, was almost an anticlimactic afterthought. Perhaps Christmas Eve memories remain more vivid to me today because the anxious anticipation of that night made it so embeddable in the mind and soul of a seven-year-old.
Here is how our family celebrated on Christmas Eve.
Each year a different aunt or uncle (siblings of my mother's mother) would host a party for exchange of opłatki and of gifts. Eventually my mother and her sister would, as adults with children, share in the hosting duties. No meal was served -- each individual family would take care of dinner ahead of time -- but dessert was available, and Christmas cookies, and herring and crackers and other delicacies, and plenty of beer and liquor. (This was Milwaukee, after all, and we were Polish.)
Before heading off to the family gathering, my parents would drive over to the convent attached to my school (St. Agnes in Butler) and deliver two gallon jugs of wine and a box of Christmas cookies to the sisters who taught me. It was during one of those deliveries when, at age 7 and sitting in the back seat, I read an article in The Milwaukee Journal that explained the origins of Santa Claus. It opened my eyes but I didn't let on for a while, perhaps thinking that if I revealed a disbelief in Santa, there may not be gifts under the tree for me on Christmas morning.
So one year the party might be at the Michalak residence, the next at the Czutas, the next at the Jaegers, the Geilenfeldts, and eventually at the Benkerts and Sinceres. But the pattern always remained the same: share opłatki and wish everyone, individually, a Merry Christmas, followed by an exchange of presents, with the youngest cousin opening his or hers first, and circling around the room by age until the floor was strewn with wrapping paper and toys and games were piled high in front of each recipient. (The last year I remember hosting at our house was my senior year of high school, 1976, and some classmates of mine from Marquette University High School arrived "unexpectedly," costumed as Santa Claus and his elves. That was a treat for the young ones, of course, and a minor break in the pattern.)
After that party broke up, usually around 10:00 o'clock, we began to make the rounds of homes in the Sincere family. We would start at my father's parents' house, then move on to my Uncle Bill's and Uncle Carl's and sometimes other homes, as well. At each stop there was lots of smoke (cigarette and cigar) and lots of booze.
I am astounded, given the snowy and icy weather that accompanied Christmas Eve in Milwaukee, and given all the heavy drinking going on, that we made it home without crashing into a snowbank or telephone pole. But we did.
As a child, Christmas Eve meant sitting in the back seat of the car, staring out the window at the sky and wondering if I would catch a glimpse of Santa's sleigh. Before leaving our house, we would listen to the Santa trackers from NORAD in periodic broadcasts on radio station WEMP, which played wall-to-wall Christmas music all day and all night. (And not that monotonous dreck played by "all-Christmas" stations these days -- radio stations in the 1960s had a much longer, much more varied playlist than they do in 2008.)
We would finally get home around 3:00 a.m., which is very late for a 7- or 8-year-old. Worn out by all the activities, my dad would carry me into the house, lay me in my bed, and, before I knew it, the sun was shining through my window and I discovered that Santa had, indeed, arrived with a load of presents.
My Christmas-childhood ended, in a manner of speaking, when I was 15 years old. That year, I joined my parents in laying out the gifts underneath the Christmas tree in the late-night hours of Christmas Eve after my younger sister had gone to bed. That transformed me into an adult for the holidays. (The next year, of course, when I was old enough to drive, was even more of a transformation -- I became the designated driver for the evening, which meant my mom and dad could imbibe even more freely than in all previous years. And I'm not talking wassail, either.) With age comes responsibility.
When my parents moved, with my sister, to Las Vegas while I was in college (in 1979), we did our best to continue the traditions with which we had grown up in Milwaukee. Even if it was just the four of us together on Christmas Eve, we would share an opłatek wafer and then attend a Polish-language Mass at St. Anne's Catholic Church on South Maryland Parkway. It was a little bit of snowy home brought to life in the arid desert.
While looking through some old home movies that had been converted to VHS and DVD, I recently came upon a sequence from Christmas in 1959. (Luckily for me, my grandfather -- who took most of the film -- included the date clearly in one shot.) That turns out to be my first Christmas, and you can see me opening presents on Christmas morning -- at the age of eight months!
The family posed and singing in this video seems to be from my mother's father's side of the family: Michalaks and Labinskis and Sasses and Ambrowiaks. In later years, we would celebrate with those branches of the family on a date closer to Epiphany rather than on Christmas Eve, on a Saturday evening in which we went from one house to another in a "progressive" dinner, each home serving a different course in a full meal. (The first two houses would be drinks and hors d'oeuvres, the third house would be drinks and salad, the fourth house would be drinks and the main course, and the last house would serve after-dinner drinks and dessert.)
The musical soundtrack I have added to this video consists of traditional Polish carols -- known as kolendy and pastoralki -- some of which were sung by Walter Bobbie last weekend on A Prairie Home Companion. And so the circle is complete.
Those looking for evidence of the transmigration of souls may have to look no farther than this news item, which comes just days after the death of evangelical leader Jerry Falwell:
The spokesperson for children's rights in Poland, Ewa Sowinska, singled out Tinky Winky, the purple character with a triangular aerial on his head.
"I noticed he was carrying a woman's handbag," she told a magazine. "At first, I didn't realise he was a boy."
Perhaps the new soul failed to take root, as Ms. Sowinska has reversed her stance, according to Washington Postblogger Emil Steiner:
On Tuesday, her spokesperson announced that Sowinska "hasn't asked and won't ask" psychologists to investigate whether "Teletubbies" promote homosexuality in young viewers. Much like Jerry Falwell's 1999 battle against the colorful, rotund creatures, Sowinska was essentially laughed into defeat after suggesting mental health professionals should analyze the sexual orientation of what is essentially a puppet. As the roars of laughter and criticism, (even from her own party) poured in Sowinska was forced to make a hasty retreat which came in the following statement: "They are fictional characters, they have nothing to do with reality, and the bag and scissors and other props the fictional characters use are there to create a fictional world that speaks to children... We are not going to deal with this issue any more."
Too bad. We could have got laughs out of this one for weeks.
It is a rare occasion when I find myself in accord with Red Ken, the flaming socialist mayor of London.
Yet when I opened up this morning's Washington Times, I read an article in which Ken Livingstone's views are presented as fully in line with mine.
In a Bloomberg News article (which does not, strangely, appear on the Washington Times web site) about the influx of Polish immigrants to Britain since 2004, Livingstone is paraphrased as saying he thinks immigrants are good for London's economy:
Attracted by jobs and higher pay, immigrants are transforming neighborhoods as shops stock Polish goods, jobseekers post notices in their native language and attendance at Catholic churches booms. The new residents are weakening "community cohesion," lobbying group Migration Watch says.
"Londoners are being displaced by the arrival of immigrants, which is changing the makeup of the city," said Andrew Green, the organization's chairman "It simply isn't sustainable."
Mayor Ken Livingstone disagrees, saying immigrants help the economy grow. The city is investing in transportation, housing and police services to keep pace with the inflow, he said.
It is hard to see how Polish immigrants might be taking jobs from British natives: The unemployment rate in the UK is now about 3 percent, compared to 11 percent or more in Central Europe.
The article goes on to note the long history of Polish settlers in London, including novelist Joseph Conrad and refugees from Nazi- and Communist-occupied Poland in the middle of the 20th century. I remember having lunch at a Polish restaurant in Chelsea as long ago as 1987, when one of the habitués asked me if I was Polish. (I had to pause to think about my answer, finally settling on, "No, I'm American. But my ancestors were Polish." He seemed satisfied by that.)
Around that same time, I saw a terrific play at the National Theatre called Coming in to Land, written by Stephen Poliakoff and starring the incomparable Dame Maggie Smith as a Polish refugee -- or not -- trying to gain asylum in Britain. Smith's character's name was Halina Sonya Rodziewizowna. (The play, directed by Sir Peter Hall, also included Anthony Andrews and Tim Pigott-Smith in the cast.)
Althought the political situation was far different then than now -- this was the height of the Cold War, remember -- some of the themes echo from the play today. Here's a speech from Act I; you'll notice the parallels as the speaker catalogues the reasons Halina may not be able to stay in Britain:
Firstly, Halina has waited, which is usually fatal. There is a detestation of casual applications -- unless you arrive screaming at the airport, I can't stand it back home and I'm not safe there, demanding immediate asylum, they are intensely suspicious, they are paranoid about all sorts of odds and sods being dumped on them from Eastern Europe...
Secondly, every attempt to land is made in context -- the context of world events, and that isn't too good at the moment is it. The recent sudden squall of East West tension, the expulsion of five Polish students in the US for industrial and military espionage, and three Russians from here...
Moreover Halina does not wishto get involved in ritual 'hate' propaganda about her homeland, understandably.
(Sharply.) Lastly -- Halina is not unfortunately a famous dissident, or even a member of Solidarity, no fashionable reason here, nor obviously is she something nationally desirable, like a ballerina, olympic athlete, boxer, squash player, or even a film director!
What the critics of Polish (and other East European) immigration to London fail to recognize is that London is the premier cosmopolitan city. It was, in fact, the first truly cosmopolitan metropole to emerge since the fall of Rome, and it did so during the Renaissance. London attracted more and different peoples earlier, and in greater numbers, than any other town or city in Western Europe.
That London was a crossroads is a significant -- if not the most important -- factor in Britain's true claim to be the leader in the Industrial Revolution. London attracted thinkers from both the French and Scottish Enlightenments. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, the dining clubs in London of the 18th century had the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge gathered in one place -- with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.
London was the destination for many different types of Britons -- Welsh, Scots, Irish, Geordies -- for centuries. French Huguenots and Jews expelled from continental Europe settled there because it was a safe haven. And it had a Chinatown long before New York or San Francisco did. Recent decades have seen many other lands represented among London's population. As the Bloomberg story explains:
Poles are just the latest wave of newcomers to try their luck in London. Migrants from India, Pakistan and Africa boosted the population in the 1990s. Twenty-eight percent of Londoners were born outside the U.K., according to the 2001 census.
The article includes this astonishing tidbit:
London businesses are adapting to their new customers. Nil Kanth Patel said he learned Polish to serve customers better at his newsstand in Hammersmith.
"The neighborhood has gone through lots of change, especially since 2004," said Patel, who is from Uganda and has run the shop for 17 years. "It's been great for my business, as half of my customers are now Polish."
What could be more emblematic of London's cosmopolitanism -- and indeed of the global economy itself -- than an African immigrant with an Indian surname learning Polish in order to build a better business?
A few weeks ago, I read University of Chicago historian William H. McNeill's memoir, The Pursuit of Truth. The book -- which is worth a review all of its own -- describes McNeill's intellectual struggle to create a coherent "world history" and to make that sub-discipline respectable within the community of professional historians.
One insight that McNeill had is so simple that its profundity might be missed: namely, that progress depends on the interactions of strangers, or, as McNeill puts it,
the continual innovative effect of contacts and and exchanges between civilizations and peoples round about, with special attention to technological transfers....
London has for centuries been a nexus of exchange among strangers. It is, and has been, for that reason, a great city -- if not the greatest. In the 21st century, the contributions of Polish immigrants and others from the new member states of the EU will make London even greater.
There's an old joke that goes something like this:
A visitor from Latin America attends his first major league baseball game in the United States. When he gets home, a friend asks him what it was like.
"Americans are so friendly and caring," he replied.
"Why do you say that?," his friend asks.
"Well, when I got to the baseball stadium, almost all the tickets were sold out. I was only able to get a seat in the top row of the highest set of bleachers. The baseball players looked like ants from that distance."
"So?," his friend remarks. "How does that make Americans friendly and caring?"
"Just before the game began, to my great delight, the whole crowd stood up and looked at me and sang, 'Jose, can you see?'"
I'm sure I am not the only person to remember that story -- which I swear I first heard in fifth or sixth grade -- during the current kerfuffle about whether the "Star-Spangled Banner" should be sung in Spanish. This has been Topic A of the blogosphere and talk radio, and it has even reached the nosebleed section of American politics: the White House and the U.S. Senate.
President Bush yesterday said "The Star-Spangled Banner" should be sung in English, not Spanish, and condemned plans by some immigrant groups to stage a work protest on Monday to sway the debate over the nation's immigration laws.
With passions running high over the release of "Nuestro Himno," a Spanish-language version of the national anthem, Bush told reporters that people who want to be citizens of the United States should learn English and "ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English."
Today in Congress, Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), proposed a resolution that would prohibit the singing or recitation of the words to the "Star-Spangled Banner" in any language but English.
“Mr. President, across the country today, thousands and thousands of immigrants – legal and illegal – are marching in a nationwide rally. Many are saying that they, too, want to be Americans.
“But, Mr. President, I’m afraid the message is, quite literally, getting lost in translation. As part of these demonstrations, a new version of our national anthem, the Star-Spangled Banner, has been produced – in Spanish.
“According to an article in the Washington Post last Friday, at least 389 different versions of our anthem have been produced over the years, in many musical styles, including rock and roll and country. But, the Post also noted, never before has it been rendered in another language."
I'm not sure who was wrong first -- The Post or Senator Alexander -- but that statement is simply, flat-out, factually wrong. There have been plenty of translations of the "Star-Spangled Banner" into other languages, and "Nuestro Himno" is not the first.
Let's just look at a few random Google hits.
There's a Scottish Gaelic translation of the song by Catherine McInnis, called "A' Bhratach Breacadh Nan Reul."
The vast majority of Polish Americans have celebrated the Fourth of July in various ways for generations. At times of heightened anti-Polish and general anti-foreign sentiment (late 19th/early 20th centuries), the occasion provided our immigrant ancestors with an opportunity to demonstrate their loyalty to their adopted American homeland. To this day, Polonians observe the Fourth of July by holding their own parish or club festivities as well as family picnics and outings. The Scranton, Pennsylvania-based Polish National Catholic Church holds a major annual Fourth of July celebration that begins with an open-air Holy Mass under a tent, followed by refreshments, folk-dance performances, music, games and other attractions for the entire family.
A fitting tribute to the occasion might be a Polish-American patriotic commemoration which could showcase the contributions of Kazimierz Pulaski and Tadeusz Kosciuszko to America's independence and honor other Polish-American soldiers who gave their lives in America's defense. Such an observance could include wreath-laying at Kosciuszko, Pulaski or Revolutionary War monuments or war memorials, a dual Polish and American flag-raising and the playing of both countries' national anthems. If your community has the choral capacity, an interesting twist might be the public performance of a Polish-language version of the "Star Spangled Banner."
The only known translation of the American national anthem into Polish was the work of Chicago lawyer and life-long Polish National Alliance activist, Walery J. Fronczak (1893-1886)[Note: I think this should read 1893-1986 -- RS]. The text, published by Chicago's Polish-language "Relax" magazine (March 28, 1987) and reprinted in Wojciech Bialasiewicz's "W kregu Chicagowskiej Polonii", went as follows:
Gwiazdzisty Sztandar
O, czy widzisz Ty - wczesny swit spedza mrok.
Sztandar, co duma nas napawal przy zorz sklonie
I czarem swych barw, gwiazd, gdy go przez wa_ strzegl wzrok,
Lsnia, chociaz krwawy boj nikl w wieczora oslonie?
Przez cala noc ryk dzial, i blysk rakiet wiesc slal,
ze jeszcze ten nasz pelen sily znak stal.
O, czy gwiazdzisty sztandar powiewa jak wprzod,
Kedy wzrosl wolny kraj, gdzie wzniosl dom dzielny lud?
O, niech tak bedzie wciaz, gdy stanie wolny lud,
By uchronic swoj kraj od zniszczen wojny, glodu!
Niech z niebios laska kraj triumf swieci przez trud,
Niechaj slawi te Moc, ktora Stra__ Narodu.
W proch pasc musi nasz wrog.
Bo prawa bronim drog.
To haslo tkwi w nas:
"Wiara! Z nami wciaz Bog!"
O, niech gwiazdzisty sztandar powiewa jak wprzod,
Kady wzrosl wolny kraj, gdzie wzniosl dom dzielny lud.
On the same site, you can find a facsimile of an original Yiddish translation dating to 1943, and a facsimile of the sheet music for a Spanish versiondating to 1919! At least two German translations can be traced to the Civil War -- and somehow I can't imagine President Lincoln tut-tutting about German soldiers fighting for the Union who wanted to sing "O! sagt, könnt ihr seh'n."
Ignorance does not mix well with xenophobia, though the two far too often walk hand in hand.
"One of the smarter blogs is the libertarian-leaning collection of Charlottesville posts put up by Rick Sincere..." -- Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, May 8, 2005
, published in 1972 by the Polanie Publishing Co. of Minneapolis, gives some background on 
It is hard to see how Polish immigrants might be taking jobs from British natives: The unemployment rate in the UK is now about 3 percent, compared to 11 percent or more in Central Europe.
, written by Stephen Poliakoff and starring the incomparable Dame Maggie Smith as a Polish refugee -- or not -- trying to gain asylum in Britain. Smith's character's name was Halina Sonya Rodziewizowna. (The play, directed by Sir Peter Hall, also included Anthony Andrews and Tim Pigott-Smith in the cast.)
A visitor from Latin America attends his first major league baseball game in the United States. When he gets home, a friend asks him what it was like.
