Christmas in our country starts a long time before Advent , around 20th October, with Xmas decorations in shop windows. Later the Xmas decorations appear in the streets,too. Many Xmas trees are raised at various places, mainly in squares and in front of some buildings. Also live conifers are decorated. Traditional is the tree in the Old Town Square, which used to be erected here and called the Tree of the Republic before the WWII. Beside the trees there is another decoration in the streets, on the buildings and behind the windows of the flats. Some decoration is nice but very often it is quite gaudy and kitschy. The open-air Xmas markets are all around Prague. Traditional Xmas goods, like candles, gingerbread, decorations( made of glass,wood,straw, lace, metal), "františky" ( small frankincense cones), sparklers, mistletoe etc. are available at the stalls as well as "not at all Christmas" goods, like leather goods, T-shirts, books, caps and so on.

Also money for various charities is raised to a much greater extent before Xmas. People are pushed to give their money to the disabled, to abandoned children, homeless people etc.and hearts and wallets are expected to open.

Cultural life in Prague is also influenced by coming Christmas. Xmas exhibitions and concerts are performed at least since the end of November.

Before Christmas people send more cards than any other time of the year so it is the busiest period for the Czech Post. We add two typical Czech Xmas postcards made by painters J.Lada and his daughter who used to draw scenes from a Czech village.

Santa Claus was not known here before 1989. This old man dressed in red and with a beard is said to come from somewhere in the north but he rather looks like a fat American with some hamburgers and cans of Cola in his bag. In our country children believe that their gifts are brought by mysterious "Ježíšek" (Little Jesus) and put not into stockings but directly under the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. Ježíšek is invisible and you can´t describe his appearance like Santa Claus´s. It is fully up to the imagination of a particular child what Ježíšek looks like. Children always wonder how he gets into the living room. We hope our traditional Ježíšek will survive the invasion of Santa Claus. He is very strong and imunne. When we were under the Soviet influence, Russian "Dida Mráz" (Grandad Frost) was strongly supported by the authorities (like other things coming from our eastern Big Brother) and attempts were made to expel Ježíšek. Fortunately for us, in vain.

And yet we have a figure which resembles Santa Claus. It is Saint Nicolas ( the Czech version is Svatý Mikuláš) who is celebrated on St.Nicolas´s Eve, 5th December. Dressed like a Catholic bishop ( a mitre, a crosier, a vestment, a long white beard) and accompanied by an angel (impersonation of the good) and a devil (impersonation of the evil) Nicolas comes into homes and brings children small presents (mostly confectionery). Before being gifted children have to recite a poem or sing a song and confess their "sins". As there are always some sins, children may find not only sweets but also coal and potatoes. Children are frightened of the devil who carries a rod and is ready to punish naughty children. In fact St.Nicolas and his companions are Daddy or some neighbours and friends of the family. Or it is a group of teenagers who let themselves hire for money and have fun at the same time. Recently only a very small children believe in Saint Nicolas, so you can meet a group of children disguised as St. Nicolas party.

Christmas itself are three days - 24th, 25th and 26th of December. On these days adults do not have to go to work. School children have Xmas holidays from 23rd December to 2nd January.

24th December (Christmas Eve) is called "Štidrý den", which can be translated "Giving Day".

This day is the most fun day of Christmas holidays. It is Adam and Eva´s name day and the Christmas tree is decorated on that day in many households. According to one of many Czech Christmas customs and traditions, one is supposed to fast all day before dinner to see the "golden piglet". Sauerkraut soup is the only meal one can set one´s eyes and mouth on during the fast.

We put a few questions relating to Christmas and New Year to forty-four students of our school. One of them was the inquiry about Christmas Eve´s dinner. It seems that some traditions are still vivid: 33 eat carp, 35 potato salad and 12 fish soup (another traditional meal). 11 have fried steak (Wiener Schnitzel) instead of carp.

If you want carp for Xmas dinner you must buy it in the street a few days before 24th December. Some people,especially those with small kids, buy a live fish and let it live for some more days in a bathtube (in chlorinated water). Among our respondents 31 answered that they buy or have ever bought a live carp. The rest have the fish killed by a trader. There is a nice memory of an Englishman in the English magazine for Czech students "Bridge" (December 1999):

"Whilst wandering around I wondered why I kept seeing small paddling pools next to market stalls with people peering inside and pointing. To my amazement one of the traders pushed what appeared to be a fishing net into one of the paddling pools. I got a little closer and couldn´t believe my eyes when he pulled the net out and there was a fish wriggling about in it. I cautiously looked over the rim and saw enough carp to fill a small lake, gasping for air through the mist that escaped from the freezing water. I felt a bit sorry for them really. My feelings were tempered, however, when I ate some on Christmas Eve."

Another traditional meal are special Xmas cookies baked only on the occasion of Christmas. There is a big choice of these sweets and it is a time consuming activity for mothers and grandmothers. Every cook has her traditional recipes inherited from her mother and her mother and maybe even her mother and there must be,at least, tens (hundreds ?) of them. You can also buy it in the shop but it is rather expensive and far not so good as your mother´s products.

After dinner, the family moves to the Christmas tree, which is all lit up and beautiful, and everybody opens their gifts.

39 of our respondents spend Christmas at home and 10 visit their relatives. 5 students regularly go to the mountains at Christmas.

Christmas Eve customs, traditions and superstitions Christmas Eve is associated with many superstitions, usually relating to life, love and destiny that awaits one in the year to come. Very few of them are still alive now.

It was the custom to fast for the whole day on Christmas Eve, for only the person who didn´t eat until Christmas Eve dinner would be able to see the golden pig on the wall that evening.

That morning the Christmas tree would have been decorated- mostly with red apples, walnuts, gingerbread, and other sweets and candles had to be fastened to the tree branches to be lit in the evening. On the tip of the tree the star of Bethlehem was set.

The Christmas feasts began on Christmas Eve at nightfall. The table was covered with a white tablecloth and the legs were wreathed in garlands, so there would be no thieves from the fields. Under the table was put a bowl of grain and on it a bowl of garlic. Garlic was believed by all Slavs from ancient times to have special powers of protection (vampires ?). It used to be as important as the tree and sweets are today. The mother then layed out on the table o loaf of bread and a pot of honey. The father then tied together some shocks of grain, dipped them in holy water and sprinkled the whole house with them, not forgetting the fire, so it wouldn´t burn down the house.

The family didn´t sit down together to dinner until the first star came out. This dinner was always plentiful in every household, for even the poorer ones tried to fill the Christmas table with the greatest number of dishes. There had to be at least nine dishes on the table at once. One of a few explanation for the nine-course-meal says that the more food that is on the table the longer the family will remain sitting side by side eating. Another one says the more courses there were, the more grain there would be in the field. In some households other measures were taken to keep the family together at the table. Legs of the chairs at the table were often bound one to another so that family members would be as close as possible and would remain that way the following year. If you are brave, or simply don´t believe in superstitions, then maybe you might get up from the table first. The believer knows that the first person to leave the table will also be the first to die in the new year. Huh ! Death in the new year is also presaged in another tradition involving nuts :

Each family member is given a half of a nutshell with a small candle inside. The candle is lit and the shell is placed in a water basin. Shells which capsize signal death, nutshells which stray toward the center of the basin but don´t overturn signify that the family member shall leave the household the next year. Only the shells which remain along the inner rim of the basin are completely safe, their owners shall remain close to the family.

The dinner was begun by cutting up a loaf of bread into many slices. If a slice or two was left, than that meant that someone would arrive in the family. If one was missing, then in the next year someone would die.

The traditional Czech Christmas Eve menu had different forms in different regions. In some places the bread was followed by soup, most often mushroom, but a traditional Christmas Eve course was "kuba", which was prepared from grouts, wild mushrooms and garlic. Another part of the feast were peas, which were prepared in the old Czech style- sweetly, sprinkled with sugar and gingerbread. At the end, desserts were passed around, combined with dried fruit.

After finishing dinner, each member of the family took a walnut and an apple. If the nut was rotten when cracked open, it was an omen of sickness or even death. But everything could still be saved by the apple: if a star was revealed when it was split in half, this foretold health and long life.

There was another custom connected with walnuts. After dinner, three nuts were cracked open and their insides removed. The first walnut shell was refilled with dirt, the second with a little piece of bread, and the third with money. The shells were then stuck back together and placed back among the other ones. At midnight every took a walnut from the bowl on the table. If someone got the nut with the dirt inside, then poverty awaited them. Getting the nut with bread foretold a comfortable life, and the one with money inside naturally was a prophesy of great wealth.

After dinner was finished, the leftovers were taken by the father out to the livestock. The poultry received a different treat- peas or poppy seeds so they would lay plenty of eggs. The rooster, gander and dog got garlic in their food, so they would be as sharp as they should be in the next year.

A girl threw a shoe over her shoulder toward the front door. If it landed with the toe pointing toward the door, she was doomed to marry within twelve months. If the heel was pointing toward the door, her freedom was guaranteed for another year. If a girl discovered by her shoes that she had to wait for her wedding and wanted to know for how long she had to wait, she had to give up a strand of her hair. On this hair she would tie a ring and hold it as close to a glass as she could. The number of times the ring clinked against the glass before it settled was the number of years she had to wait.

Another superstition says that if a woman is given branches cut from a cherry tree on 4th December and the branches bloom by the 24th , she is sure to marry the following year.

A girl curious about the appearance of her future husband could find out by pulling wood- closing her eyes and taking a piece of wood out of a pile. The shape of this piece of wood reveal to her how well-built, bent, slim or fat the partner future held for her would be.

Single girls could attempt to get an even better idea of what their future partner would be like. All she had to do was to take three slips of paper with the names of her probable husbands and tie them up in hankies.Then she tied up the fourth hanky and put them all under her pillow on Christmas Eve. On the morning of Christmas Day, she would choose one of the hankies and untied it. If it was empty, then she was never going to marry.

Christmas Eve ended with Midnight Mass, which was held in every church. On Christmas Eve and God´s Feast (25th December), people wouldn´t play cards, go to the pub or visit relatives. This had to wait until St. Stephen´s Day (26th December), when the dancing parties and the period of merry-making and carolling began.