The Times Herald (Norristown, PA)
CHRISTMAS RITUAL Local family keeps pierogi-making tradition alive through four generations
NORWOOD » The kitchen in the home of Tina and Jay Maguire of Norwood was bustling Saturday afternoon. Dozens of family members, from ages 3 to 75, donning clothes and aprons dusted with flour, squeezed in and out of the room, to take their shift at the stove, sink or table. It was the Kosloski family’s annual holiday pierogimaking party, a tradition that they’ve treasured through four generations.
The popular Eastern European pierogi is a small dough envelope filled with mashed potato, meat, sauerkraut, cheese, or vegetables, crimped to seal the edge and then boiled or fried in butter, typically served with sour cream or fried onions. Spelled Pierogi in Polish, the name is also commonly spelled as peirogy, pyrohy, pyrogy, or perogi.
The Kosloski family members spell it “pierogi” and they’ve been making them since they were knee-high, watching their mother in the kitchen. Steve and Floss Kosloski and their eight children made their lifelong home on Primos Avenue in Folcroft. Although Floss was Irish and Pennsylvania Dutch German by descent, she wanted the children to know their Polish heritage. Steve’s parents, Charles Kozlowski and Sophia Brczyk Kozlowski, fled Poland for America during World War II. Charles later changed his surname from Kozlowski to Kosloski.
Floss not only sent her children to “Polish School” on Sundays at St. Hedwig’s Church in Chester to learn the Polish language, culture, dance, traditions, and customs, but she made it a family tradition to have a traditional Polish Christmas Eve dinner, also known as Wigilia, which literally meaning “vigil.” The meatless Christmas Eve meal, also known as the Star Supper, doesn’t begin until the first star appears in the sky. As part of the meatless dinner, the Kosloski family always enjoyed pierogi, handmade by their mother.
“Mom not only made the Christmas Eve pierogi,” remembered Terry Kosloski Olsen, who now lives in Stevens, Pa., “But she made the entire meatless dinner that included buckwheat with honey, crab casserole, fish, cole slaw, lima beans and brussel sprouts from my dad’s garden.”
As the eight Kosloski children moved out, got married and had families of their own, they would continue to gather at their parents’ home in Folcroft every Christmas Eve, no matter how far they had to travel, to enjoy the traditional meatless dinner and be together. If they arrived early, they were put to work , helping their mom fry the pierogi.
When Floss had a stroke in 1992, Tina Maguire, the oldest of the Kosloski daughters, moved the pierogi-making over to her house and took over as “pierogi matriarch.”
“In the beginning, it was just us girls,” Maguire remembered. “But then the men and the children saw how much fun we were having, and soon they joined in carrying on the tradition.”
The family has come together in the week following Thanksgiving every year to make the Christmas Eve pierogi and carry on this beloved family tradition. Everyone will take home a tray of about 70 pierogi per tray to freeze. Christmas Eve morning, they will take their frozen pierogi out, saute them or bake them , with onion and butter, and bring them over to the Swarthmore home of Denise Maguire Stuhltrager, Tina and Jay’s daughter, and her husband Stephen, where the entire family meets for the meatless feast. They used to meet at West End Boat Club in Tinicum Township for the Christmas Eve extravaganza, but eventually the family party moved to the Stuhltrag-