"Polish Catholics have a 1000-year-old Christmas tradition that I would like to recommend to you. The 'oplatek,' or Christmas wafer is a large, rectangular flat wafer made in the same fashion as the bread used for Communion hosts. It is usually decorated with some Christmas scene impressed upon it. When families gather for their Christmas meal, the father of the family breaks a piece and passes it around the family members, with each breaking a piece and offering prayers for the family and wishes for one another in the Christmas season and in the coming year. Having learned the custom as a young priest from Polish parishioners, I introduced it in my own family's celebrations with great effect. We practiced a variation on the custom, asking each person present to spend a few moments with each other person, exchanging pieces of the wafer and asking forgiveness for any wrongs in the past year and offering some specific expression of gratitude to the other person. I realize that Christmas gatherings can be raucous, and many words spoken, but it is rarer for those words to be filled with such meaning as we experienced by the gift of this Christmas custom."
In a recent commentary, Bishop Richard G. Henning, the bishop of the Diocese of Providence
(RI), reflected on this custom and its means.
To access Bishop Henning's complete essay, please visit:
The State of Hope: Practice the ancient custom of the Oplatek this Christmas (21 DEC 23)
Editor's note: Although our heritage is Slovak, not Polish, our family has been observing this custom for generations.
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