Christmas dinner most Poles spend the day feasting with their family. The Christmas meal is elaborate, served in the evening on 24 December, offering large quantities of food. This Christmas Eve meal is called Wigilia. After the first star appears in the sky, everyone shares the Christmas wafer (opłatek) and wishes good things for the coming year. Then supper begins. The meal is meatless, honouring Catholic tradition. Many households also prepare a great variety of special Christmas dishes, typically numbering 12 in honor of the 12 apostles. Dishes include: stuffed carp, fried carp, herring in wine sauce, herring in cream sauce, fruit
A Christmas Eve one of Edgar Allan Poe's lesser known works, "Berenice". Like "Senso", the story is framed in the form of the protagonist's secret manuscript. Maria, the main character's nurse, to her horror comes across this document and narrates its disturbing contents to the reader. Giorgio is a disturbed young man from Turin, vacationing in Milan in hopes of finally coping with the death of his twin sister Emelia, with whom he has shared a close bond. But by Christmas Eve, his condition only worsens and he starts suffering from horrific stomach pains, unable to eat or drink. By night fall, he