A letter from Stanisław Orzełowski - wishes for a healthy, happy and joyful Christmas 2022

Dear Relatives of the Jasiński and Orze(y)łowski families.

More than fifteen years have passed since we met at the Great Jasiński Family Reunion, held on 21 July 2007 in the village of Jasionka in the parish of Zbuczyn. Is fifteen years a long time? There can be only one answer – it is no small stretch of time. Add that number to the age of our Elders and it turns out that most of them have died; add it to the age of the young and it turns out that they are grown up now and most have families of their own. And those born after the Reunion know nothing at all about it.
One of the traces left to us by the Jasiński Family Reunion is the website www.jasinscy.org.pl, run by our Cousin Andrzej Jasiński. It is still there to be used, and you will find on it the information he has posted about the Reunion, the Family Book and the Christmas wafer gatherings. For this remarkable work I offer Andrzej my great thanks.
The most lasting trace left to us by the Reunion of 2007 is the book I wrote in 2014 under the title "Spojrzenie wstecz". It is a chronicle in which I gathered accounts and many photographs from all our gatherings and reunions – the smaller ones and the great ones alike, held in the Jasiński and Orzełowski families.
While the book was taking shape, Andrzej Jasiński did his best to make it known on the website he runs and administers, posting my letter there and adding these words of his own:
- "Below I am posting a letter from Stanisław Orzełowski about his newly written Book "SPOJRZENIE WSTECZ", a chronicle of the years 1983-2014 in the Jasiński and Orze(y)łowski families: of bringing the family together and of its cultural life. I have had the chance and the pleasure of reading parts of it, and in my view it is a book worth having in your library — indeed, one you ought to have — both out of affection for the family and, above all, for the valuable and interesting things it has saved from being forgotten and set down for good. For my part I will add that I have long admired Stanisław Orzełowski's work for the Jasiński and Orze(y)łowski families. All the more warmly, then, do I encourage you to get in touch with him at stanisław_orzelowski@o2.pl to say that you would like a copy of the Book."
About 200 people put their names down for the book, and a year later there were more, so we had another 50 copies printed. The book runs to some 650 A4 pages, with the text interleaved with about 1500 photographs. In truth only those who bought it can see what went on in the cultural life of the Jasiński and Orze(y)łowski families.
I dedicated the book to my cousins in the Jasiński and Orze(y)łowski families, who played their part at the various stages of our shared work of bringing the family together and keeping its cultural life alive. It is a chronicle of sorts, in which I describe the effort they put into this family undertaking, which I led. Without their help I could never have done so vast a piece of work on my own.
The words that served me as a motto while working on the book were these:
We want to catch up with tomorrow.
In this fashionable urge we make a mistake:
we look back, behind us, far too seldom.
And we will not take the ancient wisdom into account,
that the key to the gates of tomorrow must be sought in the past...

Marian Jonkajtys

I leave the book to those who come after us in a form that will let them reprint it at any time.
In this way I send my warmest wishes to all the Cousins of the Jasiński and Orze(y)łowski families, taking the chance while the Jasiński family website is still running.
I wish you a healthy, happy and joyful Christmas, and in the New Year of 2023 the fulfilment of all your plans and intentions.
…Everyone is hurrying now
to join the shepherds.
And I too hurry with my wishes,
for I cannot be there with you.
Health, happiness, good fortune,
and may goodness dwell among you.
And may the great power of God
come down upon you on the Holy Night…

Stanisław C-1645/B-4115 Orzełowski (a Jasiński on his Mother's side) and Family. Siedlce, December 2022