Can you say Sledz?

Since it's just a few days more than two weeks before Christmas, I have been finding myself thinking about Christmas Eve dinner more and more often. Having the piernik already made and frozen allows me to focus on the main part of the meal and all the special ingredients that need to be purchased. At our house, Christmas Eve is celebrated the traditionally Polish way. It is called Wigilia.
According to a very old custom, Wigilia dinner is served right after sun down and is usually comprised of 12 meatless dishes. We've always stuck to the meatless rule but have never served the 12 dishes. I guess you can consider this another non-traditional tradition, but we are full enough with the five or six we make every year to consider adding any more.
Every family has their favourites but we have been lucky enough to have my mother make, red barscz with uszka (beet root soup with little dried mushroom-filled dumplings), Greek fish (a white fish served with a carrot, celery and onion sauce), two kinds of home made pierogy, potato and cheese as well as sourkraut and mushroom ones, breaded shrimp and breaded calamari rings with sea food sauce( this has become a custom to appease my children who didn't like the barscz or fish), a fresh salad and usually a hot vegetable or two.  Since all that cooking has been getting too difficult for my mom to do on her own, I have been getting more involved over the last several years. Last year, my daughter and I made the pierogy. They were not exactly up to my mother's par but I'm sure they will get better the more often we make them.
The one traditional dish that our family shares with most Eastern Europeans and Scandinavians is sledz.(shle-dge) or pickled herring. I didn't mention it till now because it's a dish we normally put on the table and soon after take back to the kitchen. It is one of those things we feel compelled to keep preparing even though I can't think of a single person at the table who eats it. I must admit, I did eat it as a child and even enjoyed it. As the years went on, it became less appealing and went the way of other foods I no longer eat such as smoked eel, headcheese, blood sausage and galareta (pig feet aspic).
There are countless stories of my husband Paul first joining the family for Christmas Eve and feeling obligated to at least try the dreaded stuff. I should have known he was a keeper after he tried more than once to acquire a taste for something that I think you have to grow up eating in order to appreciate. It is pickled in it's raw state, it is cold, it is salty, it is vinegary and fishy. There are many recipes available for trying to make this delicacy palpable but my earliest memories of sledz are of men eating it straight out of the jar and following it up with a shot of vodka. Even the promise of Vodka didn't make it worth trying the third time around. He is now an unabashed sledz hater and not afraid to say so. You, however, may be one of the lucky ones who will welcome a new reason to drink a shot of good Polish vodka after every bite. Here is a look at how others enjoy it.. Cheers!