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
Twelve-dish Christmas Eve supper or "кисла капуста", "kváshena kapústa" or "kisla kapústa") with wild mushrooms or peas, red borsch, mushroom or fish soups are served in Poland and Ukraine. Boiled or deep fried dumplings (Polish: "pierogi", Russian/Ukrainian: вареники, "vareniki" or "varenyky", Lithuanian: "auselės") with a wide variety of fillings (including cabbage or sauerkraut, mushrooms and crushed poppy seeds), are among the most popular dishes. Doughnuts filled with jam (Polish:"pączki", Ukrainian: пампушки, "pampushky") are served for dessert in Poland and Ukraine, but in Lithuania sweet dishes are not common, as they are believed to be inappropriate for the solemn atmosphere of the evening. As for