Christmas in ČR!

First I’ll tell you about Christmas, and then I’ll give an update of what I’ve been up to!

 

Christmas in the Czech Republic is interesting because of all the traditions. I was surprised at first when I heard that there were so many because if you look it up, the Czech Republic is apparently the most atheist country in the world, so you would think Christmas wouldn’t be so big here. But, it is! (It has to do with Communistic anti-religion that it’s so atheist now, but old traditions still live).

Here’s some traditions that my Czech family does:

• Leading up to Christmas, each family has a wreath with 4 candles, and we light one each Sunday of Advent.

• We also have some mistletoe (jmeli) we bought at the Christmas market over our table for luck.
• Every Czech person seems to make the same few kinds of cookies. The biggest ones seem like linecké (cutout cookies with jam in the middle), vanilkový rohlíčky (little vanilla and somehow almondy cookies in the shape of the beloved rohlik — that dang bread roll that’s every where), and perníky (gingerbread). I showed my family how to make the American cutout cookies that my family makes every year and they showed me how they make their Czech ones too.

I lost it because I was helping my host mom make perniky and she took out a mushroom-shaped cookie cutter. MUUUSSSHHHRRROOOOOMMMSSS!!!

• “Christmas” is only the evening of the 24th here and we celebrate just with our immediate family, and the 25th is for visiting extended family.
• Christmas dinner is carp (or schnitzel, more recently) and potato salad.
• Every Christmas, there’s a new fairy tale released on Czech TV, and we have to decide if it was better or worse than last years’
• Presents don’t come from Santa Claus, they come from Ježišek (baby Jesus) (again, the most atheistic country? You sure?)
• On Christmas, you take a big bowl of water and nut shells and put a candle in each nut shell, then each person has to put it in the water and if it goes to the other side, you’ll have a good and successful year, and if it sinks, there’s going to be death in the family
• After dinner, each person can cut an apple in half. If the core is shaped as a star, it’s good, but if it’s a a four-pointed cross, someone in the family will die in the next year.
• On Christmas, if you fast all day until dinner, “you will see the GOLDEN PIGLET”… whatever that means

Now some weird outdated traditions I heard of:

• The table should be set for an even number of guests, or else it’s bad luck (which doesn’t make sense to me because normally in Slavic culture, odd numbers are good luck — actually I heard that if a guy tries to give his Czech girlfriend an even number of flowers, he’ll get slapped for it!)
• The family melts a piece of lead and pours it into water, and the shape it makes is supposed to say something about the next year

I have to quote the next two from online, I don’t know how to explain that ahah:

• “An unmarried girl is supposed to throw a shoe over her shoulder and towards the door. If the shoe lands with the toe pointing toward the door, the girl will marry within a year.”
• “An unmarried girl is supposed to shake an elder tree and if a dog barks [as all do when you shake an elder tree, I mean why not?], she will marry a man who lives in the direction from which the dog bark came.”

There’s some other ones too, but most of them are basically just “If X happens, then there will be death in the family!” I guess the Czech Republic was a tough place to live a long time ago when they made all these traditions, seems to be a lot of death!

 

Okok so about me…

I switched families back again so I’m living in Nejdek once more and there’s a whoooole lot of snow there because it’s up in the hills. I told everyone “yes yes, I’m used to the snow, Wisconsin is sooo snowwwyyyy.” But now I’m just….

Yep, that’s snow up to my hips! The most snow I’ve ever seen in my life! Actually, I have to be honest, when I heard I was assigned to the Czech Republic, I cried for a few minutes because I thought that it didn’t snow enough there (my dream country had been Greenland or Finland)… Nevermind!!

I really am starting to understand more in school and some of the classes are really interesting. Most interesting for me is social studies class, because we just did a unit of study on concentration camps — in the Holocaust, but also what I hadn’t heard about before, was the concentration camps where they would send people who didn’t agree with the Communist government. We had a man who had been sent to a camp for speaking out against the regime come out and tell us his whole story. I tried so hard to hang on his every word and listen but somehow I just couldn’t get so much of it! But I saw enough from picture that he showed us to see how horrible the conditions were — tiny cells to live in and hardly enough food. I think this man said he was a prisoner for around 8 years at various camps.

I was trying to find articles in English to understand more and I found this quote:

“About 75 000 people passed through the camps in the Jáchymov area, of whom 45 000 – 50 000 were actually political prisoners,” said František Šedivý, vice-chair of the Confederation of Political Prisoners (Konfederace politických vězňů – KPV).

(Jáchymov is a town only about 20km from Karlovy Vary).

What else was interesting was this week when I was talking to my host parents about how we have to learn Spanish in many US schools, and they were telling me how they wish they would’ve had English available in their school, but that they had had to learn Russian instead. I asked them why they thought it was, and they said that they just remember hearing that everywhere was bad except Russia — “Russia is our brother! Not Germany, not USA, only Russia!!” Of course I heard about this attitude before in history classes, but to actually hear Czech people telling me how they remember it, in Czech, was so so interesting for me.

Okay anyway, let’s go on to nicer subjects, shall we?

We had another Rotary meeting in Prague. I was so happy to see all my Rotary friends and we had a blast! We went all around Prague and saw all the “important” things to see.

One interesting fact they told me was that there’s all these fancy-looking crests above the doors on really old streets of Prague, and they said that was because there weren’t street names or house numbers; you would just send your letter to “the house of the two golden suns” and they’ll know this one:

Here’s some pretty pictures:

My friends and me looking cute at this place where everyone was taking pictures

Me standing next to the guard at Prážský Hrad (it’s where the president lives!)

Prážský Hrad (Prague Castle)

Last weekend, I went to a Rotary Christmas concert at Andělská Hora and here’s some pretty pictures I took.

I found the place where fairytales are made

This guy was playing the “dudy” — the Czech folk bagpipes — at the concert. You blow into it and the air stays in a sac under your armpit so you push it out using your arm and play fingerings on a flute-looking thing. It sounds pretty cool!

“Hey Emma, what’s the Czech Republic like?” (yeah, that’s a makové koláč… oooohh)

I’m having fun with the build-up to Christmas here and I’ll tell you about it after the fact too!

Happy holidays!