Polish Church Celebrates Easter with Traditional Food Blessing

April 7, 2002

Source: The San Francisco Chronicle

On April 7, 2002, The San Francisco Chronicle featured an article on the new Polish Mission Church in San Jose, CA. "After 1981, a new wave of Poles swept into Silicon Valley. In 1991, a pledge campaign was started to raise the $1.4 million they needed to build their own church. It was opened, after much hard work, three years ago." This Easter "families arrived, bringing baskets of sausage, bread, butter and hard-boiled eggs to be blessed for Easter breakfast... 'They come once a year to bless the food, because this is the custom in Poland,' says Father Pawel Bandurski... Swieconka (pronounced 'shveeyen-tson-kah') goes back to spring fertility rites in Eastern Europe, but the Polish Catholic Church wove it into the celebration of the Resurrection and the meal that celebrates the end of the restrictions of Lent."