I hope you all enjoyed Christmas time with your beloved around and in this post, I would like to share some Czech Christmas traditions and customs. I think it is always nice to hear and discover how other nationalities spend Christmas. The part which I am always interested in, is traditional food 😀 So that is where I start.
- Christmas food
I love our Christmas dish as we do not eat it throughout the year so much (sometimes I eat it only during Christmas and sometimes during other months) so maybe you can imagine how eager people are to eat it finally again. In my family, we eat a fish soup as a starter. There is many varieties and a lot of families do not have the fish soup at all. Then, it comes to that awaiting dish ! Potato salad with fried fish/chicken (schnitzel). It may sound boring, however, it is delicious. Each family has different potato salad and we use these ingredients: potatoes, ham, eggs, onion, sour cucumber and mayo. Other families may omit some of those ingredients and add vegetable and other things. Fried fish is usually carp. Due to bones in fish, we usually eat schnitzel which is a great substitute.
And of course, we need something sweet afterwards. In the beginning of December, baking season begins and all families bake their Christmas sweets (= cukroví), which is also a thing which you can see only during the Christmas time. Again, cukroví differ a lot family to family and of course, I love ours the most. I would say that each family bakes vanilla rolls (= vanilkové rohlíčky), which are typical and delicious. Another sweet thing we bake is called vánočka, which is made of leaven dough with raisins and almonds and with hot chocolate it is perfect.
Well, I devoted a lot of time to food and now back to other traditions.
- Advent period
We celebrate advent (4 weeks period before Christmas) and every Sunday we light up one candle on the wreath. Usually, Christmas lights and decorations start to be visible everywhere and chaos in shopping malls begins. But it is not surprising, is it?
- Christmas Eve
We celebrate Christmas on 24th of December in the evening. Firstly, we start with eating Christmas dinner, which I described previously, and after finishing our dishes we all go to a Christmas tree to unwrap the presents. Then a calm evening follows, a
nd we just talk to each other.
Following days 25th and 26th celebration continues with other family members and people usually visit their grandparents and other relatives. Those days are national holidays, therefore most of the shops are closed and we continue with eating potato salad and schnitzel/fried fish. Families watch a lot of Christmas fairy tales together and the most popular one is Tři oříšky pro Popelku (=Three wishes for Cinderella). Even though it is a movie from 1973, many people watch it every year and it became part of Christmas tradition.
- Weird traditions
Since we eat a carp for Christmas dinner, you can buy them directly on the street almost everywhere. They are sold in huge “bathtubs” and you can pick the proper carp which you want and here comes the weirdest part. Sellers can kill the carp for you, hence you can find a lot of blood close to those selling points. Another way, what some families do, is to buy the carp alive and then let it swim in your bathtub at home for few days and then kill it by yourself. Sounds really odd, doesn´t it? 😀
- Mikuláš
This is not related to Christmas so much, but I
think it is interesting to mention. On 5th of December, you can see many devils, angles and Mikuláš in the city and literally everywhere. This is a special day for children as those three are invited to homes to tell children whether they misbehaved or not. Often it may be someone from family who put on a disguise so that children will not recognise them, or you can easily find some devils, angles and Mikuláš close to your home and invite them (often you are supposed to give them some money for this service). As I have already mentioned, the main purpose of inviting them to your home is to warn small children that those three are observing children´s behaviour throughout the whole year and they are able to see if a child is rude or do not listen to parents. Afterwards, children receive from them sweets or presents according to their behaviour and naughty children often receive fewer sweets and with potatoes instead, which symbolise “misbehaviour”. Now, when I write about it, it sounds a bit weird to me, however, I grew up with those three coming to us every year and I always got a lot of potatoes 😀 I was always wondering how they could see everything, but the trick was that parents quickly told them how cheeky I was.
I did not expect that long article, however, I wanted to share our Christmas traditions, which, in the end, sound really odd even for me 😀 Hopefully, you found that interesting.
Have a prosperous New Year full of new experiences!
Denisa