The Blessing of the Easter Basket

When I was growing up, our holiday celebrations were firmly grounded in Polish traditions. Hopefully this year, I will have the opportunity to write more about a traditional Polish Christmas Eve meal, Wigilia.  But for now, my thoughts turn to spring and Easter. 

For Poles, the blessing of the Easter Basket, Swieconka, continues to be an enduring tradition. The blessing takes place on the Saturday before Easter, and the basket typically contains a sampling of traditional food: hard-boiled eggs, ham, sausage, salt, horseradish, fruits, bread and cake.  Just like the seder plate, each food in the Easter Basket has symbolic meaning.

 Eggs symbolize life and Christ's resurrection
 Bread symbolizes Jesus 
 Lamb represents Christ
 Salt represents purification 
 Horseradish symbolizes the bitter sacrifice of Christ
 Ham symbolizes great joy and abundance 

This is my (90 year old) Grandmother's version of the Easter Basket or what she commonly refers to as "blessed food".  The dogwood is from her garden on Eastern Long Island. Happy Easter everyone!

A Love Affair with Genealogy

A guilty conscience is never a good thing. For years now, I have been doing genealogical research on the "Italian" side of my family.  But as my Italian research has progressed, I have definitely felt some pressure to research and document the "Polish" side of my family as well.

But to be honest, the task has always felt very daunting to me.  First of all, I do not read Polish or Russian.  And even if I did, Polish vital records are nearly impossible to come by -- as opposed to Italian vital records which have been meticulously microfilmed and catalogued by the Morman Church.  This research likewise requires a keen sense of the history and the geography of Eastern Europe, which is extremely complex and at times very disturbing (i.e the Holocaust).

With that said and done, I feel an urgency to research, organize and disseminate this information before it is lost.  Luckily for me, I have relatives in the US and Europe who I can tap for valuable information.  I also have many relative documents and photos which I have gotten from my grandmother, Sophie, which I continue to process. And as time goes on, more and more information is available on the web.

So in honor of the new year and my new "can do" attitude, I am updating my web site to include my Polish Genealogical Research. (For those of you familiar with Abruzzo Journal, I have also updated the site design as well.) The Polish Annex has a link for a discussion thread as well as a "drop box" in which photos and documents can be down loaded. I have also posted "maps of interest" which you can refer to while reading future posts.  I will post a photo/document gallery, as well as family trees, in the near future. 

Happy New Year!  MAC