My family celebrates every American holiday around polish and Slovakian traditions and heritage. My great grandparents on my mother’s side came to America from Poland in the early 1900’s. They had seven children after settling in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. They taught each of my great aunts, uncles and grandmother polish culture. My great grandparents emigrated from Slovakia around the same time and had six children and also settled in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Although most have died or moved on to other states, my grandmothers and grandfathers still believe in these traditions no matter what the occasion. Growing up I never thought it was unusual to have haluski at birthday parties and halupki’s at Christmas on my mother’s side. When my older cousins would bring over their boyfriends and girlfriends that’s when I first noticed something was different with my family. Now with the food came traditions that my grandmother and mother still do. During Christmas the house needs to be spotless the day of Christmas, this ensures that the house is “cleansed” in a sense for the whole year. We also get together on Christmas Eve to be together at midnight and have Vigil, which is the polish Christmas meal. When eating Vigil we put a full plate of food in an empty seat to remember those family members who aren’t with us. At Easter there aren’t many traditions but we always eat kielbasa, pierogies and makowiec along with other American food. Kielbasa as many people in western Pennsylvania know is just polish sausage. Pierogies are dough dumplings filled with cheese and potatoes or other things and makowiec is a poppy seed pastry. On my father’s side, my great grandparent’s were also immigrants but from Slovakia. My grandfather really embraced his heritage and taught my father’s mother who was Irish all of his traditions. A lot of Polish and Slovak foods and traditions are very