By Rajmund Dabrowski
Grandma’s stories about hospitality were the best. As kids, we would listen to vividly-described events that took us back to her own childhood. The small incidents from the “grown-up” world grew large in the world of children. Sitting at my bedside, she would speak about things and happenings that are all too often missing from the fast-paced life of today. With our child-like imagination we could travel into a world where kindness was ever present and it wasn’t difficult to be happy.
It was wintertime in the small Polish town of Radomsko. Her sister, Maria Stelak,* lived with three children, and for them Christmas was celebrated in traditional Polish fashion: a table full of typical holiday cuisine, festively decorated, with an abundance of freshly baked cakes covered with blue-black poppy seeds, all laced with laughter and wonder.
On Christmas Eve, the table was traditionally laid with one empty place left for an uninvited guest, a wandering stranger. Year after year, Aunt Maria would play hostess to someone at this empty place.
The house was off the beaten track, right at the edge of a forest. This particular year, instead of guests, there was an abundance of snow. The children had their noses glued to the frosted glass, waiting for their guests to arrive in horse- drawn carriages. But no one was in sight.
The evening games were later disturbed by a gentle knock on the door. “They are here!” children shouted. When the door opened, however, they found a stranger. He looked like a beggar, his beard white with frost. Under his arm, he carried a bundle. His clothes were torn and dirty. Grandma recalled that the stranger was a Jew. A traveler and a stranger, he was last thing they expected on that night.
His frozen feet were soon treated to a tin bucket of warm water. Then he ate like he’d never seen food before. Soon his face revealed the gratitude that can only adorn the countenance of a contented traveler. He wiped the bread crumbs off his face and beard, stood up, bowed, and walked toward the door. In an instant he was gone.
Hearing the door close, Maria shouted to bid him come back. “We must give him food to take away.”
“They went outside,” Grandma Janina continued. “There was no one in sight. Not even footprints in the freshly-fallen snow.”
It all sounded so real. Did she really experience such an awesome encounter? Later she would tell stories of her other encounters with miracles.
I keep asking myself, who was the stranger on that Christmas Eve in Radomsko? No answer comes, but I am convinced that angels visit good homes.**
Generosity—a gift that keeps on giving. Christmas is a celebration of the Gift.
–Rajmund Dabrowski is RMC communication director.
*Her son, Jerzy Stelak, pseudonym “Kruk,” was a cousin, and a contemporary of my mother, Alina. He was a WWII partisan, often pictured on his horse with a group of comrades roaming the central Poland countryside, creating resistance attacks against the German army.
**A Bible text comes to mind: “You welcomed me as if I were an angel of God, as if I were Christ Jesus himself” (Gal 4:14, NIV).