Just as Americans like to celebrate their classic culture as well as their pop culture, so folks in the Polish Triangle and beyond are gearing up to revel in a wide spectrum of their traditions at this coming Sunday’s annual Harvest Festival, sponsored by Our Lady of Czestochowa Church in Andrew Square.

This 21st annual “Dozynki” is part celebration, part fundraiser, part refresher course on Polish culture, heritage, and traditions. Proceeds from this year’s event will go toward repairing the church’s roof, which, according Pastor Jerzy Zebrowski, OFM Conv., “was recently damaged in high winds.”

Actually, the festivities begin on Saturday (9/17) after the 4 p.m. Mass at a Polish cookout with food prepared by Euromart and Café Polonia, followed by a ticketed contemporary Club Night at the school with DJ Mariusz.

The Sunday event is free and open to the public. The schedule includes religious rites, appearances by Hussar re-enactors in period armor, and authentic folk dancers as well as less highbrow crowd-pleasers like a jelly-donut eating competition.

Local restaurants and delis have been preparing lots of Polish specialty foods. The large church parking lot will be filled informational booths, a beer and wine garden, and raffle ticket stations. The Kids’ Zone will feature pony rides, a bouncy castle, even a magician.

After the 11 o’clock Mass on Sunday, the Dozynki starts with a procession from the church to the parking lot where a loaf of freshly baked bread and basket wreaths with sunflowers and grain stalks will be blessed.

A perennial highlight of Sunday’s event is an outdoor performance by the Krakowiak Polish Dancers of Boston. The group was formed back in 1937 and still rehearses on Thursday evenings in the Boston Street Polish American Citizens’ Club. Its various children’s, teens’, and adult troupes have performed around the world and for such dignitaries such as the Pope.

The adult group, fresh off an appearance at last weekend’s Dozynki up in Salem, will entertain on the field opposite the church parking lot, where Christmas trees are sold in the winter. But don’t expect to see any Polish-American dances like the Polka. This ensemble’s dance suites offer a medley of authentic folk dances from various regions of Poland. This year the two suites presented will feature dances from the Wielkopolski region of Poland as well as also from the Slask (Silesian) area.

According to Krakowiak artistic director Andrea Haber, “The Wielkopolski dances are performed with whips, as the men’s costumes are derived from the livery worn by carriage drivers and horsemen. The whips are used as percussion to punctuate the movements of the dances. The ladies’ costumes are confections of starched lace and pastel colors, and they hold perfumed lace hankies while dancing - perhaps to ward off that horsey smell?”

She continues: “Slask is a wealthy mining region, evidenced by the gold and silver embroidery on the women’s costumes, and also the intricate jewelry they wear.  Because mining is a 24 hour occupation, there is always a shortage of men for dancing. They solve this by dancing in trios. Our suite highlights some of the attendant problems with this arrangement!”

Among the other cultural components will be the school choir singing in Polish and a book sale featuring new or used volumes in Polish that will help neighborhood children and adults improve their reading skills.

As for those Polish jelly donuts, paczki (“poonch-key”) is what they are called, each one of them packing 400-500 calories and 25g of fat into a sugar-coated treat the size of a fist. According to Alina Morris, who runs DJ Market on Boston Street, the church requested 120 paczki.

For the record, the world paczki-eating record stands at 22 pastries in 10 minutes, held by a gentleman in Hamtramck, MI. That’s works out to 11,000 calories and 550g of fat.