Kūčios

Kūčios (Lithuanian pronunciation: [ˈkuːtɕɔs]) or Kūtės (Samogitian Dialect) is the traditional Christmas Eve dinner in Lithuania, held on December 24.

Some traditions are no longer widespread and usually Lithuanians just enjoy dinner with relatives and friends while the main events and festivities are left for Christmas Day.

Everyone in a family makes a special effort to come home for the Christmas Eve supper, even from great distances.

While the Catholic Church has decreed that food may be eaten as often as desired on Christmas Eve, most Lithuanians still adhere to the original custom of abstinence.

Although official fasting no longer exists, most Lithuanians refrain from eating meat on Christmas Eve so as to preserve tradition.

Regardless of what is consumed during the day, it is vitally important that the Christmas Eve dinner include no meat dishes because it would then no longer be called Kūčios but an ordinary meal prepared for any other evening.

The table is then covered with a pure white tablecloth, set with plates and decorated with symbols of the life force, which sustains the human world according to pagan beliefs.

[2] These include fir boughs, candles, and a bundle of unthreshed rye, which pagan families would traditionally bind around their apple trees the next day.

The apples recalled our first parents through whose sin mankind fell and that the world was saved through the submissiveness of the New Eve— Mary, the Mother of God—to God's will.

Other common dishes include boiled or baked potatoes, spanguolių kisielius (cranberry kissel), cooked sauerkraut (prepared without meat), mushrooms, kūčiukai or šližikai (bite-sized hard biscuits) with agounų pienas or aguonpienis (a poppy seed "milk"), cranberry pudding, and multigrain breads with honey and margarine because butter is not allowed being a dairy product.

This is because the people whose lifestyle produced the Kūčios traditions made do with food prepared in the summer and fall: dried, pickled and otherwise preserved for the winter.

It is believed that the spirits of deceased relatives or loved ones will visit the home during the night and the table set with food would make them feel welcome.