Hello everybody. Here we go again and in this blog, we will look at how does our Christmas Eve looks like.
First of all, let me tell you the origin of the Czech name for Christmas - Vánoce. Well, the Czech word Vánoce comes from german Weinachten which means Saint Nights. So how does the "Saint Nights" looks like in the case of the Czech Republic? I will describe to you my Christmas Eve.
I get up at 8:30 and sincerely I think it doesn´t matter when you get up if you are Czech. I have some breakfast and then my father puts the tree into our dining room and I and my brother decorate it. I have to inform you, that this tradition of decorating the tree started in the 19th century so it's a quite new tradition. Then we have our lunch, which is Štědrovečerní Kuba, a meal made of hulled grain and mushrooms. Our ancestors ate it as dinner but this is not our case, as you´ll see later in this blog. After lunch, we prepare Christmas biscuits on trays.
we could put a Bethlem, but we don't keep this tradition, although our ancestors did it. This tradition is quite old and it dates into 1223 when the first Bethlem was put in Italian Umbria. Today, it is more common to see Bethlems in our churches or in Třebechovice pod Orebem where you can see an exposition which is held every year. If you can´t go there, just go to any church in Brno and you will see the Bethlem. Betlem is usually made of wood and it´s composed of baby Jesus, Maria, Joseph and animals and pastors.
The last thing I mentioned before was lunch, so I would like to continue here telling you, that some people believe, that it is possible to see a golden pig when you don´t eat all day.
After lunch, we have some free time for wrapping the presents. Then we have dinner which consists of a piece of fried carp and potato salad. Somebody cooks also fish soup and puts the scale under the plate to have money next year. After dinner, we go to our room and wait for the rinning of baby Jesus. Then we can go to the dining room and look under the tree, where are wrapped presents. We put there ours as well. Then we unwrap our presents. During the unwrapping, we watch Three wishes for Cinderella on TV. After that, we sing Christmas carols and eat Christmas biscuits. At midnight we go to the mess. On 25th and 26th we visit our relatives for a lunch. We give them our presents as well.
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