Christmas in the Czech Republic

Merry Christmas One and All!

Thanks to everyone who sent emails, annual family letters, cards, packages, or Skyped us to wish us well this holiday.  It has been an interesting one with different customs and opportunities, but touched with sadness at being so far away from old friends and family.  A long post with many, and sometimes gory, details follows, so, if this is as far as you get...we love you...Happy New Year!

The flu plague visited our abode this past week and thrusted deep its sickle.  It started with Caleb a week and half ago.  Then Silas vomiting through the day on Sunday.  Lucy came home early from church looking pale, she proceeded to sleep for most of the next 24 hours.  By Monday morning I had a fever and cough.  Even Kristine got hit with a chest cold. We're still kind of limping along, but generally on the mend.

Lucy gave a talk in church last week - in Czech.  The tough thing about giving a talk in Czech is that, even though you can write out all the words, pronouncing them is difficult and slow, so people have a very difficult time understanding.  Well, Kristine, Caleb, and the Branch President all reported that Lucy did an excellent job.  Aubrey and Caleb joined in the program at church playing a Czech carol on the cello and violin.  It being the Sabbath we didn't go shopping, but had it been any other day I would have been tempted to pick up a wild boar they were selling at a the Christmas market in the street.

On Tuesday, Kristine and I attended a performance by the Southern Bohemian Philharmonic Orchestra of the Czech Christmas Mass by Jakub Jan Ryba.  It's the Czech equivalent of going to Handel's Messiah.  It was nice.  I have to admit, though, that I preferred the opening act where a really strong children's choir sang Czech carols with the orchestra playing.  Czech Christmas carols are so cute.  Speaking of which, we did not go out caroling because we sounded like heck, but here are some of my favorites Narodil se Kristus Pan and Nesem Vam Noviny and Pujdem spolu do Betlema.  


Wednesday was the big day...Silas, Aubrey, Caleb and I walked to a fish market to buy our carp.  You may recall that in October we went to the destocking of a carp pond by Třeboň.  In the week before Christmas, those same fish are living in plastic tubs in the city streets.  I approached the fish monger (by so calling him I fail to properly credit the seriousness with which the fisheries people take their profession here) and said I needed two carp each between two and three kilos (4.4 to 6.6 pounds).  He looked around in the tank to find some little ones then reached in and produced a beauty of a fish.  He weighed in at 4.5 kilos (9.9 pounds).  The next one was only a bit over three kilos (just under seven pounds). 

Then comes the big question...alive or dead.  If you choose dead they beat it on the head rapidly with a baton and its all over.  The sidewalk had little pools of blood and everybody that I saw was having theirs killed.  Some places will even clean it for you on the spot.  But the most traditional is to take it home and do it yourself.  So, we walked home with two gasping carp in a big plastic bag.

 
The carp took up residence in our bathtub.  Silas fed them cornflakes and gave them some toys.  They were named Barli and Schwanli after the Alm Uncle's goats in the book Heidi (which we are reading aloud as a family).  Silas wanted to butcher them right away, but we told him it would be after his nap.



We set up the Christmas tree.  This was a challenge.  We borrowed a stand, but the opening on it was less than two inches across.  We carved the base of the trunk down to a nub, stuck it in the stand, and it immediately cracked off.  In the end we stuffed it in a planting pot, weighted it down with rocks and decorated it.  The standard Czech tradition is to decorate on Christmas Eve, but we needed something to do.  Decorations included ceramic ornaments that Lucy made and a paper star Caleb made at school. 

At about 4:30 I heard a ruckus from the bedroom.  Then Silas came flying out saying, "I'm awake from my nap, time to kill the fish!"  Well, it was too close to dinner to start the process.  We made strawberry dumplings.  Yum.  Then we cleaned up the kitchen and went to work.

We set plastic on the table and a cutting board on that.  Knives ready.  Hammer ready.  We retrieved Barli.  I set him on the cutting board, took the hammer, whap - didn't even faze him.  Whap - barely a scratch.  WHAP - the hammer penetrated his skull and buried itself deeply in his brain.  Needing somewhere to go, that displaced gray matter found a home on our refrigerator, wall, and ceiling.  Caleb scaled it, removed the head and fins, and gutted it.  Then I cut it into steaks.


Kristine was a bit distraught over the condition of the kitchen.  She thought I should kill the next one in a room that would clean up easier (who over heard of painting the walls and ceiling of a kitchen with flat, i.e. non washable, paint).  So, I waited till she left for choir practice to do the next one.  I tried cleaning up the walls a bit before starting on the 2nd.  There was this spot, if I just stretched a little more...the chair I was on tipped and I came crashing down in a heap.  That hurt.  This carp thing was looking pretty questionable at this point.



This time I used the flat of the hammer and had Caleb hold up the plastic bag so any splatterings would be caught.  Well, I beat him and thought he was dead (by they way, I call them he but they were both females, it's just that the notion of violence to females is so odious).  But I was mistaken.  Suddenly, he is flopping about in a pool of his own blood.  Caleb was still shielding any splatterings - at the head end.  So, one wall has brains, the other has blood.  Eventually he died.  This one I filleted.


We delivered the fish to the Tučkovi because they wanted to marinate them in yogurt sauce over night and we set about cleaning up the place.  We threw the heads, tails, gutted bodies and egg sacs into a pot with garlic and onion to make some fish soup.


On Christmas Eve some Czechs fast until dinner to be more spiritually prepared to receive the coming of Jesus or to see a golden pig (we have heard both reasons).  Those in our household who fasted didn't see any golden pigs (I carried the camera around just in case), but then, we broke our fast at noon to eat golden fish soup.  'Twas good.

From Christmas

We went to the Tučkovi for a proper Christmas Eve feast.  They had their best china out.  We had a simple beef broth soup, followed by deep fried carp and potato salad with a rose non-alcoholic wine.  Afterward, we snacked on Christmas cookies while Aubrey, Caleb, and Lucinka Tučkova (on the recorder) played carols. While waiting to hear the anticipated bell, the kids played with sparklers out in the garden.  The bell was heard and the parade home began.  Here the presents are brought by the Baby Jesus on Christmas Eve.  A bell rings telling you he just left and then the kids can go at the presents.  We opened ours and then spent the remainder of the evening playing.



On Christmas morning we went to church.  The congregation has a little meeting filled with song and scripture.  Kristine played piano for the carols.  Aubrey and Caleb played the Overture from Handel's Messiah really nicely.  A choir consisting of the missionaries, Branch President, Aubrey and Kristine sang an incredible arrangement of Angels We Have Heard on High.  In my opinion, it was the best choral piece I have ever heard at church, and that's saying something.  


After the service, we went to the river and threw bread to the ducks and swans.  In the tradition of Saint Francis of Assisi we like to get out on Christmas and share some of our bounty with the beasts.  It warmed our hearts to get a note from our friends the Shanafelt's assuring us that the birds at Williams Nature Center in Mankato would find food despite the snowstorms this Christmas.


We had no snow, it melted earlier in the week.  The weather on Christmas was balmy.  Caleb was going stir-crazy, so he, Aubrey, and I took a bus to Dobra Voda (a suburb/village) and went hiking in the hills.  It was beautiful.  I think we all really missed the exceedingly white Christmas you received back home, but, if it's gonna not be white, it was a least nice that it was warm.


One more tradition...early in the month we bought some branches snipped from a cherry tree.  The lore is that if you put them in water and they blossom by Christmas Eve, an unmarried female in the household will tie the knot within a year.  Lucy assures us that she is not eligible, so we hope Brother and Sister Benson are quite prepared for their daughter to get hitched this year.


Those were our Christmas activities.  Underlying it all, though, was the same spirit of goodwill and appreciation for our Savior that makes us cherish this time of year.  We hope your Christmas was lovely and uplifting.


Peter



P.S. Strange thing happened on the way home Saturday night.  We saw this light in the sky, kind of like a candle floating in the air about five stories up.  It passed over our apartment, moved northward over our heads and continued toward downtown.  We thought at first it might be some kind of fireworks or a flying saucer or a hot air balloon.  Then, we settled on the golden pig, flying.  We continued southward and a guy passed us going north.  He was dressed in camo and carried what looked like a ski pole over his shoulder in soldier marching with gun style.  Probably a ray gun. It was creepy.