Making family traditions – celebrating Christmastime together - Andrzejki

Ulula is based at Rush Farm, a biodynamic farm in Worcestershire.

The farm has been a wonderful means of meeting and making new friends from across the world through the splendid WWOOFer volunteers (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms), who have come from around the world to help us on the farm and soon become one of the family. This means that we now feel very much that we are an international family on the farm; as international as our Ulula family of wonderful worldwide customers :) We may not be €˜together' on the farm across the winter months (a time of rest for the farm so no volunteers are needed), but sharing our winter traditions and memories is very special. Our winter family and community traditions are instilled in us when we are little, and these memories and feelings stay with us as we grow up, and we bring them into our world anew when our own little ones arrive. These traditions are unique to each family, region, country and each generation, and we carry them with us, whether we are stay in the country of our birth, or find ourselves somewhere different. 'Different' brings opportunities - for both enjoying, and learning other families' traditions. We blend them into our very own happy ever afters. Just as it should be x Over the next few weeks we will share some of our international farm family's memories of the Advent and Christmas period: Andrzejki - Poland (St. Andrew's Day) On the last night of November we are celebrating Andrzejki (Poland - St. Andrew's Day). This year it's celebrated on the night between 29 and 30 November. Andrzejki is the last party before advent, and like any other Polish celebration, there is a feast with loads of food and drink and more... because this is the last day before lent (Christmas Lent) so people eat and drink as much as they can! The next opportunity will be on 26th December! Andrzejki is quite an awesome party: you want to party hard, so you could survive nearly one month without any! A part of this celebration on Andrzejki is that this is the night of rituals and fortune foretold (mainly about our relationships). The most popular tradition is that you melt candle wax and put the melted wax through the eye of a key, then cool the wax in a bowl of water. The shape you get can tell you the future - you're checking that shape using a light and watching the shadow on a wall and based on that shape you are foretold something about your future partner. Happy Andrzejki to us all x [caption id="attachment_2507" align="alignleft" width="189"] With love from Radek and Asia... our fortune telling worked beautifully x[/caption]