Christmas Eve

     Christmas Eve for lithuanians is a very special time with the gathering of the family at the ritual meal "Kučia". All family members, even those far away come home to spend time together. It is a holy family duty to come home for Kūčios and strengthen family ties. During Kūčios lithuanians used to say goodbye to the old year and celebrate the upcoming New Year. Now Kūčios is identified with the Christian feast - the eve of the birth of Jesus.


Lithuanians also had a tradition of inviting lonely neighbours for Kūčios. We decided to invite some friends that do not have family here in Darwin and celebrate Kūčios together. Our Christmas Eve was very international: me lithuanian, Andrew australian/german, our friend Francisco brasilian and the other friend Anna korean.


Preparing mushroom dumplings



    

Dumplings ready to be boiled


  Preparations for Kūčios starts early in the morning. It is very important to clean the whole house, change bedding and clothes. I was cooking from 8am till 3pm, with a little help from Andrew. He did clean the house though. Lithuanians also used to go to the bathhouse. This also had a symbolic meaning – protection from any evil or diseases. As Darwin weather at the moment is already very humid and hot, so it feels like being in the sauna anyways. Me and Andrew went to our swimming pool to relax and clean ourselves form evil by drinking some wine :)



The mushroom filling for dumplings






Andrew is holding wax & thinking

what kind of year will be 2012



  Lithuanians still maintain the tradition of not eating meat during Kūčios. I made my dishes very similar as we make them at home, including fish kutlets, fish cakes, muchroom cakes, two different herrings, kūčiukai (small Christmas Eve cookies), vegetable salads, dumplings with mushrooms, bread. Kūčios dinner has to consist of 12 different dishes. They symbolise the 12 months of the year, and according to the Christian traditions the 12 Apostles of Jesus.  On our table we had exactly twelve dishes, my korean friend brought two dishes that fit in meatless category, they were crab cakes and zuchinni with chilli tarts. One dish we made togehter: it was mushroom dumplings. It was very fun to do it and our friends could learn how to make it. We enjoyed all food very much. Unfortunetly I couldn't leave dishes thru the night on the table as we do traditionally back in Lithuania, because it would go off. It is too hot up here. Dishes in Lithuania were left thru the night on the table in tradition for the souls to come and eat.



Would you like some wine?



Anna is ready to eat ginger bread house



Francisco is in a creative-magic mood



Kūčios has magical meaning, with different magical rituals. People predict their future, whether younger girls will get married in the next year, and if farmers will have a good harvest. So we did some magic on the night as well. We took our friends outside near the fence and they had to hug as many planks as they could. Well, Francisco had 19 planks, which is not even number and so he will stay single next year. Anna had 16 and she should find a partner next year. :) The other magical prediction we did was with the candle and water. We lit the candle and let the wax fall into the water in the same spot. Later we took out the wax from the water, we looked at the reverse side and started imagining what kind of pictures there were. It was fun. We predicted a lot for next year.