Packages of Goodness
The carnival is almost over. For Catholics worldwide, these are the last days to have fun and eat well before Lent – the 40-day period (not counting the Sundays) of fasting leading up to Easter. In Poland, quite adequately, Lent coincides with early spring, the dreadest of Polish climate's six seasons.[1] In Polish tradition, the last day before Lent is known as "Fat Tuesday" or "Paczki Day". Throughout those parts of North America with significant Polish American or Polish Canadian populations, this day is marked by eating copious amounts of paczkis, or delicious, spongy doughnuts in the shape of a flattened ball, injected with jam or other filling. This is, for example, what a local paper from Grand Rapids, Michigan, wrote about the tradition:
| [Local] supermarkets have assembled thousands of the delicious paczkis (pronounced poonch-key) to celebrate Fat Tuesday […] Paczkis originated in Poland as a part of the feasting and celebration that ends on Paczki day, or “Fat Tuesday,” the day before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. […] Paczkis are made from rich round yeast raised dough that is fried and filled with a variety of flavors before being coated with granulated sugar or a sweet glaze. Paczki means ‘little package’ in Polish. Traditional fillings are prune or apricot, but are also made with more conventional fillings as raspberry, lemon and Bavarian crème. |
| — Meredith Gremel: What in the world is a Paczki?, in: SpartanNash, Byron Center, MI: SpartanNash Company, 8 February 2016 |
The funny thing is that if you showed the text above to anyone who actually lives in Poland they would be quite surprised by how many inaccuracies it contains. First of all, the correct spelling is "pączki", not "paczki". It's true that paczki means "packages", but it's a completely different (and unrelated) word than "pączki" (notice the little hook under the "a"?), which is the correct term for Polish doughnuts. Secondly, the correct pronunciation is more like PAUNCH-key than POONCH-key. Thirdly, prunes and apricots seem pretty weird as pączki fillings; everybody knows that rose-hip jam is the most traditional and most aromatic one. And finally, the chief pączki-eating day is not Fat Tuesday, but Fat Thursday, six days earlier.
Tony Machalski, a Polish American who has immigrated to the country of his ancestors and now runs the Foreign Citizen Youtube channel, did a pretty good job explaining the difference between what Polish Americans think they know about pączki and what the actual facts are back in the "old country". It would seem that Americans who proudly claim to be Polish are quite clueless about real Polish culture. But are they? Perhaps there's a good reason for these cultural differences? What if the Polish Americans are not entirely wrong after all?
References
- ↑ The six traditional (that is, pre-global-climate-change) Polish seasons are: zima (winter), przedwiośnie (after winter, but before spring), wiosna (spring), lato (summer), złota jesień (golden autumn) and szaruga jesienna (gray autumn). Or, in the words of a poet:
In Poland there's six seasons
not more than that, I guess
early spring
spring proper
summer
then two autumns
one runs away with gold
the other, damp and cold
and winter— Jan Twardowski, Sześć pór roku, own translation Jest w Polsce sześć pór roku
chyba więcej nie ma
przedwiośnie
wiosna
lato
dwie jesienie
jedna ze złotem ucieka
w drugiej kalosz przecieka
i zima
Original text:Jest w Polsce sześć pór roku
chyba więcej nie ma
przedwiośnie
wiosna
lato
dwie jesienie
jedna ze złotem ucieka
w drugiej kalosz przecieka
i zima
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