On Christmas Eve, my family gathered around our kitchen table with a paper-thin wafer incised with a Nativity scene. The wafer is called an oplatki or opłatek, which resembles communion bread in my childhood Catholic church, and it tastes like construction paper. We passed it around and, one by one, broke off pieces, making wishes for the new year.

As for many Polish and Polish American families, Christmas Eve has always been bigger than Christmas Day in my house. A traditional Polish Christmas Eve dinner—called Wigilia—is the highlight of the holiday season: a huge meatless meal that begins when the first star appears overhead on December 24. Families leave a place setting open for an unexpected guest or the spirit of a loved one to come break bread.

But in true diasporic family fashion, instead of herring and pierogies, we opted for Chinese takeout—the wafer paired well with the saltiness. After Christmas Eve Mass, my dad would pick up an oplatki in the church narthex and give either my sister or me the responsibility of keeping it in one piece on the car ride home as we visited our local Chinese American restaurant. They knew our order well.

Then, we would open the to-go containers and say grace before passing around the opłatek. We could not eat dinner until the wafer was gone. The term derives from the Latin oblatum, meaning “offering,” and is a tradition of friendship and forgiveness. It is sometimes called the “bread of love.” The opłatek was first used in early Christian church ceremonies, broken and consecrated at Christmas Eve Mass. In the Middle Ages, they were sanctioned for lay use. The tradition is also common in Lithuania, Slovakia, and the historical regions of Moravia and Silesia.

The white wafer, made of fine wheat flour and water, was pressed between iron plates like waffle irons, but families sometimes also baked a colored wafer intended for pets and livestock. Traditionally, one side has a religious scene, such as the Nativity or Mary cradling a newborn Jesus, and the other side has a Polish monument. Leftover wafers were sometimes made into fragile ornaments hung from the ceiling or on Christmas trees.

But our tradition ended when, in middle school, I was diagnosed with Celiac disease, a chronic autoimmune condition in which ingesting gluten causes inflammation in the small intestine and prevents the body from absorbing vital nutrients. After years of stomach aches and months of my hair falling out, I found answers but lost a cherished piece of my Polish identity.

I was not the only one. During World War II, the opłatek became a way that displaced Poles could recreate a sense of belonging and community. In the 1980s, folklorist David Hufford wrote about how his hospital’s chaplain provided the opłatekfor Catholic patients at Christmas time. Hufford wrote, “the oplatki illustrates how the away-from home context of the hospital encourages the introduction of unfamiliar customs. … Thus even specifically provided customary observances in this context are likely to be sources of cultural modification.”

Opłatek have remained symbols of Polish and wider Slavic identity to present. My favorite story involving them comes from Meredith Hogan’s essay “Kerosene and Cabbages” in Legacies, where she describes her grandmother holding the wafer in front of each family member as they broke off a piece, just as the priest would hold the Eucharist out to the person receiving Communion to take in their hand or receive on the tongue.

My parents worked diligently to find gluten-free alternatives. They made sure my church had gluten-free communion wafers and brought gluten-free donuts to eat after Mass, but we couldn’t find an alternative for the opłatek.

So this year, I sat down to recreate a childhood tradition for myself and my now gluten-free mom.

The main obstacle: in traditional opłatek, the wheat flour’s gluten provides elasticity and acts as a glue, keeping the dough together. Bakers use the “windowpane test” by stretching out dough until it is thin enough to be translucent. This is a sign that the gluten is well developed for an optimal crumb texture and shape. This means that a gluten-free opłatek needs a thickening agent, like xanthum gum, to hold it together.

The other issue was that almost all opłatek are produced in Poland. Any sellers in the United States, or distributors like my childhood parish, have little to no contact with the people who produce them, so finding an iron mold—specifically a personal one instead of an industrial one—was next to impossible. I tried to incise the design by hand with a knife but kept splitting the dough, so I opted to use an incise plate with an angel pattern I thrifted.

You can also use a decorative waffle or Springerle mold. Springerle is a type of south German cookie typically hung on the Christmas tree, similar to opłatek leftovers. Using a waffle press, I found, yields a thinner, crispier wafer, and in that case, it’s best to use a pancake dough made with one cup flour, two tablespoons oil, one cup milk (or yogurt for a thicker texture) or dairy-free alternative, and one large egg.

This version is more in line with a radośnik from Silesia, a paper-thin wafer sometimes smeared with honey for children. But staying true to the original, this slightly thicker wafer is flavorless—or rather, tastes like paper. After baking, it yields a satisfying snap when broken, just like I remember from my childhood.

This recipe also provides plenty of leftovers for creating your own edible Christmas tree decorations. Just poke a hole through the top of the wafer before baking using a chopstick, then tie a ribbon through the hole after baking.

It may not have the same mushy paper texture as the original—and just like communion wafers, creating gluten-free alternatives is unexpectedly controversial—but it does evoke happy memories sitting around the table and making hopeful wishes for the new year.

Gluten-Free Opłatek

Makes 3 wafers. Wafers should be eaten within the week. Ornaments can be kept for 3 to 4 weeks if sugar is not included. Sugar can attract pests.  

Ingredients

1 cup gluten free flour (I recommend Bob’s Red Mill or King Arthur gluten-free flour blends, which can be substituted 1:1, or you can find a recipe to mix your own in Cooking For Your Gluten-Free Teen)
2/3 cup water

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and move your rack to the center, equidistant from the top and bottom.

Mix flour and water in a bowl with your hands or a spoon. Mix thoroughly, until dough becomes pliable but not runny. You may need to add an extra tablespoon of water if it’s very dry. If you do add extra water, do it slowly and with very small amounts so the dough does not become too runny. The dough should be sticky but thick enough to hold in your hand without it falling apart.

When the dough is pliable, scoop a tablespoon’s worth onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Place another piece of parchment on top, then place your incised plate or lid on top of that. Then push down on the plate until the dough is about 1/8” thick. The dough will likely be in a circle. For a more distinct design, place oven-safe weights on top of the plate or lid.

Tip: If you are turning this into an ornament, use a utensil handle to create a small hole where you can insert the ribbon.

Place the dough with the plate or lid in the heated oven for 8 minutes. Test it with a fork to see if it’s hard. It will be ready when small cracks begin to form. Take the wafers out of the oven. While they are still hot, cut into rectangles to frame the design. Let cool for at least 30 minutes. Be careful—the plate and weights will also be hot.

For an added bonus, place the wafers inside a paper sleeve and this sleeve on top of a bed of clean hay. Traditionally, for Wigilia, people put hay underneath the tablecloth as a reminder that baby Jesus was born in a barn. Older traditions say that choosing a piece of straw from underneath the tablecloth can tell someone’s fortune for the new year based on the color and texture of the straw.

Emma Cieslik is a museum professional in the Washington, D.C., area and a former curatorial intern at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. As a child, she split her time between Chicago’s Polish American and Appalachian Kentucky communities. This holiday season, she is eager to recreate the tastes and smells of home.