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I love Christmas time, the magic atmosphere, which makes us stop for a while and enjoy these awesome days full of love, peace and happiness. In my country Christmas is lately something I would say more related to the traditions than to the religion.

Everything starts at the beginning of November but usually in December the real Christmas shopping fever controls almost everyone. The malls turn into the places with colorful decoration, lights blink in every corner and meanwhile you do the shopping you can hear Christmas carrols, which make these moments more relaxing and enjoyable.

On the contrarery in many cities you can visit Christmas markets where you can come across typical handrcafts, can taste traditional svařák - warm wine with herbs or local smith can make nice horsehove for good luck in front of you. Here is the picture of one of such markets I visited some days ago:

Anyway let’s move back into our homes. Almost every woman cleans everything starting with the windows and ending with the floor so that we would be ready to welcome Christmas day with perfectly clean and decorated household. Usually one or two weeks before Christmas day is high time to buy a tree. There are many possibilities where we can buy it - on the street, in the malls or even legally in the forrest. By the way we store the tree on the balcony in the bucket with water so that it would survive.

Our Christmas day is on December 24th, unlike UK or USA. In the morning we eat vánočka (va:nochka), which is traditional Christmas dish made of sweet dough, raisins and on the top of it we put chopped almonds. Here you can check our vánočka (va:nochka), we ate yesterday:

Later during the day we just enjoy the time with our family, send each other Christmas wishes, sing Christmas carrols and watch the fairy-tales on TV.

On this very special day we also keep many traditions. We believe that if we are going to fast, we will see a golden pig on the wall. We cut an apple into two parts and if there is a star inside made of core, it means we will be healthy during upcoming year, if it is rotten, it means sickness. We put carp’s scale under the plate, which means that we will have enough money etc.

When the first star appears in the sky around 5 pm we can finally eat our dinner. What do we eat? Many families prefer peas soup, in my family we eat mushroom soup and then as a main dish we enjoy potato salad and fried carp (fish). We decorate out table in Christmas style so that it all would make us feel this awesome special atmosphere. Here is carp and potato salad we ate yesterday and I can’t even see it today becuase I ate too much.. ehm as usual we all feel overeaten then :-)

Now the most important moment will come, so be ready :) Meanwhile we are eating one of the adults have a kind of hard task - to put all the wrapped gifts under the tree so that kids wouldn’t notice anything - sort of adrenalin challenge but what wouldn’t we do for the kids to make them happy. Then when we are done with dinner...that one adult rings the little bell and join the rest in the kitchen with the words: "Ohhhhhhh I think Ježíšek (Yezhishek)  has already come. Did u hear it? Let’s go and check the Christmas tree."

In the living room carrols are being played and the tree is blinking. We turn the light on and yes this is the most beautiful moment - to see the kids so happy and excited in one because Ježíšek (little Jesus) has come.

By the way let me add something mysterious. There is no picture of our Ježíšek since nobody has ever seen him, we can say little bit weird but true. We unwrap the gifts, eat the sweets we call cukrovi (tsukrovi:) and we all feel so happy and close to each other..

Later at midnight some people go to the church to take part in Midnight Mass, which is unforgottable experience. I enjoyed it many times and hope will be able to go once more again.

So it was our Christmas day, hope you liked it and I am glad I could have shared it with you, guys ;-)

M E R R Y  C H R I S T M A S