To make things even more complicated, let’s not forget the Orthodox Christians. According to a 2011 census, the second biggest religious group in Poland after the Catholics are the Orthodox Christians (about 150,000 people).
If you weren’t aware, the Orthodox use a calendar of their own. According to that one, the Julian calendar, all three of the mentioned occasions – Christmas Eve, New Year’s and Mikołajki – each occur thirteen days later than they do in the Gregorian calendar that most people are used to.
So nationwide, that gives you not three, but six traditional dates to get presents. If you cross that with the six traditional present-giving entities – Santa Claus, Starman, Little Angel, Christkind, the first star and Grandfather Frost – that gives you an enormous amount of potential ways to get presents.
In fact, the number of possibilities is so overwhelming that Culture.pl needed the help of a professional mathematician to get it right. Here’s what the Warsaw-based Anna Bulaszewska has to say about the maths of Christmas presents in Poland:
Let’s imagine that someone comes from a family that respects all these traditions. Now let’s see how many different possibilities of getting a gift that person has on a single occasion. Assuming that each gift-bringing entity can either bring one gift or none at all leads us to the number of 64 total possibilities. Now let’s see what happens when we take into consideration all six different dates for getting presents. Like before, the gift bringers can do as they see fit, either bring a present or not. That means that each of the 64 possibilities from the first occasion can be combined with each of the 64 possibilities from the next occasion and so on. So… a single person can receive a present in 64x64x64x64x64x64, that is 16,777,216 different ways.
Yes, there are 16,777,216 possibilities when it comes to receiving Christmas presents in Poland. Fantastic news, everybody! Especially for those of you worried that some of the seasonal six might consider you more naughty than nice.
Still, let’s try to remember that during Christmas, the people around you matter the most, like on all days as a matter of fact. So having a nice time with your family and friends is possibly more important than hoarding a great heap of gifts... That’s not to say, though, that a nice little Christmas present (or six) isn’t appreciated…
Author: Marek Kępa, Dec 2017