For the first Christmas Eve this year, Krakow's Strych nad Zegarem will host a multimedia showcase of reinterpretations of Christmas themes and a party. Theater, music, dancing, singing, Jewish-style herring and a small vodka – The Krakow Christmas Star Massacre.

The evening will open with a performance of The Festivities at 19:00, produced by the Przezrocza Publishing House, directed by Wiktor Typa and featuring set design by Mikołaj Stachańczyk. In the crew's own words, The Festivities is an attempt to explore the relationship between a predetermined celebration and the fun that does not follow. In a mutual attempt to invalidate each other by a message and an image that escapes understanding, the question resounds: what is a symbol of joy in a world without meaning? A manifestation of life – carnal or spiritual, a harbinger of decay, an empty educational model, an attempt at transcendence? A phantom theater of impossibility – the boxing ring of a child's room where soil is being shoveled. A child's room filled with figures – family spectres entangled in ritual, everyday objects. Tightening the doorknobs, they recite Różewicz, they clean their shoes with the prose of Beckett, locked into their weddings and funerals, they receive awards and look for their place, wake up and fall asleep – if they leave, they can never do so fully and they can never return. Their bare feet thud on rusty pipes.

After the performance, a musical program will be presented by Gabriela Kuczynska, Michal Sikora, Jakub Katarzynski and Piotr Jaszczur Snieguła. The artists write: The musical story will take the audience into a trance of folk tales, arranged for voice and instruments. The group is undertaking an experiment; an attempt to recreate the space of beliefs in light and warmth, mixed with the darkness and coldness of Old Slavic Christmas traditions. It will be a combination of old Polish carols and pastorals hummed in the thin voices of our grandmothers and grandfathers along with the magical dream of Slavic beliefs. The musical program will continue with a jam session at 22:00.

The final part of the program is a display of effigies by Paulina Gutkowska and Kinga Czubak. These effigies are a ghost of the past from the years of growing up in central Poland. They are the sadness of the spectre, the personification of childhood nightmares. The effigy is a rope suspended between death, the devil and the desire for holiness. A monument to the fear of losing innocence, of reaching maturity. It is the hero of the old Polish tradition of caroling, a representation of strength, health, fertility, suitable for a transitional time. Mute, they stand at the same time proud and frightened. They alternately force one into sin and serve to redeem guilt.

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