The carolers wear colourful shirts decorated with shepherds’ bells, mountaineers trousers and carry a whip several meters long long whip. Everybody knows them in Żywiec, because meeting them and offering them gifts brings good luck all year round. The first mention of Jukace or carolers from the Beskid Mountains, who start carolling on January 1, dates back to as early as the second half of the 12th century. Few people have heard about them in other regions of Poland. Their costumes and traditions are part of the “Holiday Season” exhibition in the State Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw. Traditional constumes worn by carolers from different parts of Poland are shown in the “Christmas traditions” room, where visitors can see Herods as well as a 19th-century Krakow crèche with original figures.

Also on display in glass cases are carnival mannequins and contemporary costumes worn by carolers – examples of the caroling tradition that is very much alive in Poland today. A bear, a red and black devil, goats and a wolf on a stick are some of the costumes worn by New Year’s carollers from Zwardon in Silesia, near Żywiec.

In addition to costumes and decorations associated with Christmas and the New Year, the exhibition also shows Easter palms from different parts of Poland and carts used on Easter (Wet) Monday decorated with colourful ribbons. Drawers of display cupboards are filled with krajki, or embroidered colourful ribbons, folk jewellery as well as kierpce, Polish mountaineers shoes.

“Our Christmas and Easter rooms present holiday accessories made in different parts of Poland,” Dr. Adam Czyżewski, director and one of the nine curators of the exhibition as well as its creator, tells Polska.pl “We decided not to reconstruct the interiors, but to present costumes and accessories associated with holidays instead. We have plenty of these on display – around 3,000 museum exhibits, which had been stored in our depositories for years,” adds Director Czyżewski.