For one, they eat fried carp as their Christmas meal, and you can buy these carp at anyone of the abundant Christmas markets in town. They are alive, and you can buy it live to keep fresh in your bathtub until its ready to be cooked, or you can have it killed right then and there. (I can only imagine the conditions of the market streets on Christmas Eve......)
Now on the 5th of December, they celebrated St. Nicholas Day. On this day St. Nick (better known as Santa) comes and visits the children, asks if they have been a good boy or girl, and gives them some chocolate. This is often done by friends of your family, and we did this at school as well.
But Santa does not come alone - no no. He is accompanied by an angel and a devil. And when we went out at night on St. Nicholas Day, it looked like Halloween: Santas, angels, and devils all around. The tradition - I believe is that the children generally perform for the 3 visitors to earn their chocolate, and the devil walks around with an empty sack to carry off any naughty children.
We had this tradition occur at our school with the kids, but only the devil and Santa - there were only 2 ppl to dress up, and apparently the angel was best excluded.
Here are 2 pictures. No, that is not the Pope, it is Santa. (But I guess it is closer to the likeness of St. Nick than our fat, red man)
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2 comments:
Those wacky Czechs The devil concept is hard for me to digest. I can't imagine what that could do to a childs mind. I wonder how many crazy uncles dress up as the devil, after having one too many, and chase their niece or nephew around, scoop them up in a sack and scare the crap (or carp) out of them!!
Hi guys,
I love the updates. I recently read a book, "The 12 little cakes" by Dominka Dery. It was all about her childhood in Prague, and the traditions you mentioned were in there, the carp, santa,devil..interesting. Hope all is well. I love all the pictures. Keep posting them.
Kerry
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