A Brief History of the Easter Basket Tradition in Polish Culture

One of the most cherished Polish Easter traditions is the blessing of a basket of specially prepared foods on Holy Saturday that is called swięconka.

​   The name comes  from the word świecić - to bless. The basket is filled with the traditional  bread, sausage, eggs, butter, salt and horseradish as well as numerous other food dictated by family traditions such as a yeast baba or placek, a bottle of wine, honey, or chocolates. Tradition dictates that nestled among all the food should be the figure of a lamb.  According to the Gospels, St John directly calls Christ the Lamb of God (John 1,29-36) when He offered his life, died on the cross and rose again on Easter Sunday.

← Knab photo.

The blessing of foods on Holy Saturday has been practiced in Poland since the Middle Ages but it is known for certain that the Easter basket carried by Polish Americans (indeed, all of Polonia dispersed throughout the world) to church on this day evolved over the centuries and initially had nothing to do with baskets at all. 

      It was the custom in those earlier centuries for kings and nobles and the very privileged to invite their bishop to come to their castle or palace to bless their lavishly laid tables containing all the foods that were going to be consumed on Easter morning..  For instance, records indicate that in 1631, on King Zygmunt III Vasa’s (reigned 1587 to 1632) Easter table there were 4 beef quarters, 5 calves, 12 capons, 22 hens, 18 chickens, lambs, grouse, partridges, hazel grouses, kid, goose, pigeons, ducks, rabbit, grouse and even an exotic turkey…
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No way all that food was going to fit in any basket!

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The Easter table being blessed among the wealthier class. Illustration from Rok Polski  Zygmunt Gloger 1900

     Over time, the number of believers and Catholic faithful continued to grow and the tradition of having food blessed on Holy Saturday gained great momentum among all classes of people including the poorest peasants in the smallest villages.  While bishops continued attending to the rich and powerful, local priests were given permission to visit the local manor houses to assist with the blessings. These blessings can be seen in illustrations and photographs from the 18th and 19th centuries.

Even with increased number of clergy, the priests had to expend more and more time and energy going to every household that wanted the food on their tables blessed. To remedy the situation, the clergy eventually decreed that everyone within a locality wanting their food blessed had to meet at a central place such as the manor house or that of mayor of the village - someone who could accommodate more people inside their home. When the indoor crowds started getting too big, the blessing was held outside the manor house.
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Blessing of baskets in front of manor house in village of Tomaszowice outside Krakow. 1937. Public domain.

     In the poorest of villages that had no manor house, the central meeting place to have food blessed was at a roadside cross or shrine where the priest came by horse and carriage to bless the food.
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 Illustration by Jan Felix Piwarski Public Domain →

    The shift from individual tables and homes to a central gathering place, be it the manor house or roadside shrine, brought about another change because the question arose:  How to transport the food that was once laid out on the table to be blessed over to the manor house or to the roadside shrine to be blessed? Answer: In the usual way goods were transported in those days…in baskets! 

Historians and ethnographers point out that early on, the baskets used by country people to transport the food to the manor house or roadside shrine were much larger and filled to the brim with all the food that was going to be consumed the next day including great big wheels of homemade bread.

     As towns and communities grew and churches were built in even the smallest villages throughout Poland, the clergy decreed that anyone wanting to have their food blessed could bring it to church…where the custom has remained to this day.

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←Rev. Czesław Krysa, St. Casimir’s Church Buffalo, N.Y.   Knab photo.

 Today’s baskets do not contain all the food found on a traditional Polish Easter table but small portions of it are represented - bread, eggs, pork, horseradish, a butter lamb, a placek. And, after the symbolic foods are blessed in the basket, they are transported back home and placed on the table to be consumed with the other prepared dishes that make up the Easter morning breakfast table.

It began with blessing the food on a table and today, many centuries later, with a few minor revisions along the way, it still ends with blessed food on the table. How fortunate we are as Polish Americans! No matter how simple our basket or our Easter table, we are so rich in having such an ancient, beautiful tradition that remains very much alive to this day.

            Wesołego Alleluja!  Smacznego jajka!  Happy Easter! (Enjoy a)Tasty egg! 

You can find more on Polish Easter customs in : Polish Customs, Traditions and Folklore and Polish country Kitchen Cookbook both published by Hippocrene Books, Inc. 

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