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
Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24 Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24 "Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24" is an instrumental medley of "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" and "Shchedryk", first released on the Savatage album "Dead Winter Dead" in 1995 as "Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24)." It was re-released by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, a side project of several Savatage members, on their 1996 debut album "Christmas Eve and Other Stories". The piece describes a lone cello player playing a forgotten Christmas carol in war-torn Sarajevo. "Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24" consists of four sections, alternating between soft and loud, as well as between the two component pieces in the medley. Part one consists of