For some in Dublin, Christmas dinner still has to mean carp

Just inside the door of the Polonez supermarket in Artane, a fresh carp lies in a white box on crushed ice.

It’s had better days, no doubt.

Around the corner, in another Eastern European shop, Polostore, there’s more carp on sale – this time frozen.

Carp – a large, hardy freshwater fish with lucky scales – isn’t stocked all year around. But in the lead up to Christmas, it’s popular.

“It’s very traditional on Christmas Eve,” says Thomas Kairo, a Polostore customer, originally from Lithuania. 

He’s standing by the meat counter, speaking to the butcher, his friend. 

Families in Lithuania would celebrate Christmas on 24 December, rather than the 25 December, he says.

If he were back in Lithuania for Christmas, he says, he would eat carp prepared by his mother, without question. She would fry it in breadcrumbs, he says.

But Kairo isn’t shopping for carp himself. Here, he says, the fish are too big for his small young family.

Others with roots in Eastern Europe still opt for it, though. 

Growing up in what, at the time, was Czechoslovakia, Rastislav “Rasty” Blazek also ate carp every Christmas Eve, he says. 

It’s a tradition he now keeps alive in his own north Dublin home with his wife and four daughters, said Blazek, of the Slovak Centre Ireland, by phone on Wednesday.

It’s rooted in centuries of Catholic tradition, he says. People were expected to abstain from meat on Christmas Eve.

“When you read the bible, Jesus wasn’t eating chorizo, or goulash. He was eating fish,” Blazek says.

Freshwater carp became the popular choice, he says – and remains a fond connection to their heritage for many in the Eastern and Central European diaspora.

The spread

For Blazek, of the Slovak Centre, Christmas Eve is still the main event, he says.

Christmas Day is for lounging, he says. It’s even considered bad luck to go anywhere, he says.

In his house, the family starts the feast on Christmas Eve with traditional waffles, thin and delicate and coated in honey. This is common in other countries too like Poland, he says.

After, comes a traditional Christmas sour cabbage soup, he says. The main course is deep-fried carp, served with a mayonnaise-potato salad.

For dessert, they have at least four different cakes, he says – all the while, sipping on wine.

While he intends to keep it alive in his home, the tradition of Christmas carp is starting to fade with younger generations, Blazek says.

Jarek Plachecki, vice-chairperson of the Irish Polish Society, says there are 12 separate dishes in a traditional Polish Christmas dinner. “And carp would be one of them.”

It’s not the easiest fish to work with, he says. “There are a lot of bones. You need to know how to prepare it properly.”

In recent years, he says, he and his wife haven’t bothered with the effort. “If we go to my mother’s, she still would.”

Artist Vladyana Krykorka-Johnson says she still remembers how carp was a treat, growing up in communist Prague during the 1950s.

Krykorka-Johnson, who now lives in Toronto, illustrated a children’s book Carl the Christmas Carp, which was written by her son Ian, about her own childhood memories.

Czechoslovakia was landlocked, she says. “So, we did not have expensive, good ocean fish. But they grew carp in local ponds.”

Krykorka-Johnson remembers going into town with her father in late December, seeing the live carp sold from big barrels on the streets.

Prague was beautiful, especially at Christmas, she says. 

People would stroll around town with net bags wiggling with carp, she says. “It was really quite funny when I think about it now.”

Her father would bring home a live fish and keep it in the bath tub.

“Then before Christmas, my father had to kill it, and he didn't like doing that,” she says.

Her mother would cook it, either fried in breadcrumbs like a schnitzel or baked in the oven with smotherings of butter.

“The carp is not a great fish. I must tell you that,” says Krykorka-Johnson. “It's a bottom feeder. Now I know what good fish tastes like, I know the difference.”

Like the Plachecki household, she herself hasn’t bothered with carp in recent years, she says. “But you know, when I was little, we all enjoyed our Christmas dinner, of course, of carp.”

Good luck

While commonly eaten at Christmas, many people hold on to a remnant of carp all year round, says Krykorka-Johnson.

Czechs would wash and dry some of the scales and stash them in their wallets for good luck, she says.

Ah yes, says Blazek, the scales symbolise coins or money. Keeping a few scales ensures wealth in the year ahead. 

But the scales have to be scraped from the carp on your plate, not from any other fish, he says. 

Sure, Blazek knows that tradition, he says. “Not only I’ve heard of it, I have one in my pocket right now.”

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.