As thousands in South Lakeland celebrate Christmas, the district’s Polish community will be enjoying the festive season in their own way - carp for Christmas dinner, and present opening on Christmas Eve. Kate Proctor found out when it comes to the festive season, they are keen to hold on to their traditions.

Care home worker Ela Bialka, 41, lives in Kendal with her three teenage children and partner Marek Duc, a chef, and is in the midst of Christmas preparations.

“Baking starts two weeks before Christmas,” said Ela, hauling a tray of meringue-shaped snowmen out of the oven.

“But I’ve had relatives to stay so I’m behind. I’d usually have all the biscuits, ginger biscuits and nougats done by now.”

Tomorrow she will pick up the rest of her Christmas food, which has been ordered especially from Poland, at the Krakow Polish Shop, in Highgate.

“When I first came to the UK six years ago it was so difficult. I couldn’t find any of the food we usually eat. We have carp for Christmas dinner and we can get that easily, but other things like sauerkraut pastries we get from there,” said Ela, who works as a care assistant at St Gregory’s House.

Christmas celebrations start in earnest for the family when the Christmas tree goes up on Christmas Eve. Marek, who works at the Drunken Duck, Ambleside, will do this with Ela’s daughter and two sons, and decorate it using sweets and biscuit decorations, rather than baubles, and it stays up until January 16.

“Men are in charge of the Christmas tree and women do the cooking. That’s tradition,” jokes Ela.

Christmas dinner is then served in the evening and the meal’s 13 courses are brought out one after the other, and include fish soup, plum and bean soup and beetroot soup, carp, vegetable salad and fruit cake, poppy cake, and cheese cake.

Bread, salt, honey, and nougat will also be on the table throughout the meal, and everyone must have a taste of each dish, even if it’s no more than a teaspoon.

Money goes under plates for financial luck in the coming year, and hay goes under the table cloth to represent hope for plentiful food in the future.

Ela said: “Every family is different in how they serve the carp. Some might fry it, some might have it in jelly. We have it with garlic and salt, and fried in breadcrumbs. We do it because it is the food Jesus shared with people in the Bible.”

After dinner, Christmas presents are opened around the tree. Midnight mass is popular with many Polish people and some will go to the Holy Trinity and St George Catholic Church, and churches in Windermere and Ambleside.

This year Ela will celebrate Christmas with partner Marek, sons Simon, 16, and Michael, 17, and daughter Ilona, 19, who is expecting her first child with her partner Craig.

She said: “Christmas is a time for everyone, Polish or English. Everyone is together at this time of year and I don’t feel any difference between the cultures. We all look forward to it so much.”