Our Kūčios Table

This year, the table features herring four ways, "Christmas Fish," rye and country breads, and three vegetable salads—beet and bean, potato and mixed vegetable, and seasoned mushroom. There's one dish that breaks with custom: an Italian seafood salad. That's a nod to the one Christmas Eve I spent in Venice.

Wait?! This photo shows only ten, not twelve, dishes on the table.  The other two dishes—another herring preparation and hot, mushroom koldūnai—still were in preparation when I took this photo.

Merry Christmas.

Verona, Wisconsin, December 24, 2011. Each dish has a piece of plotkelė on it.

Christmas Manners: Can we open the gifts now?

Suburban Chicago, December 24, 1964. I look up from the Kūčios table. Mom works on a can of lobster! There's a plotkelė on the dried fruit compote in front of me. Dried fruit compote—no wonder I look miserable.

We break bread.

Suburban Chicago, December 24, 1961. My Dad's twin sister, Jonė, and her family—husband Kadis and daughter Toronto Cousin—spend Christmas with us. The family engages in the tradition of breaking plotkelės before the Christmas-Eve meal, Kūčios. We also place a plotkelė on each dish.

We are ready for Kūčios

Suburban Chicago, December 24, 1965. We're about to share the Kūčios meal. My paternal Grandmother, Tatjana, holds a plotkelė wafer. I'm trying to imitate my cool Toronto Cousin's hairstyle; Mom didn't like it.