Christmas Craziness in Chechia
"So I have question for you on Christmas," Hana Vrbkova, my student and a gynecologist's assistant asks me. "What day is Christmas on?"
She smiles at me slyly, like she knows she's going to get to say her punchline. "The 25th," I say.
She laughs and shakes her head. "No. Christmas is twenty-four." (Hana is a pre-intermediate student).
"Well, some people celebrate on the twenty-fourth in America, but...," I search for proof why I am right, because, clearly, I am right. "Aha! Christmas is a celebration of Jesus' birthday, which is on the 25th, so--"
"No," Hana interrupts. "Jesu was born on 24."
I try to placate her. "Like at midnight?"
"No. Between eight and ten."
As an English teacher you learn to let things slide if your students insist on them. Case in point, a student of mine insisted that the Czech alphabet was the same as English's. "It's sort of the same," I try to concede. "But you have six more characters, so it's not quite the same." Marek shakes his head. "No. They are the same." Whatever Marek. I don't care if you think 32 equals 26. Christmas, though, is more important. I look at Hana's calendar. They get off the 25th and 26th as well.
"What are those holidays then, Hana?"
"The 1st and 2nd day of Christmas," she says assuredly, and I decide to give up the argument. If you believe there is a second day of Christmas two days after your official Christmas and one day after actual Christmas, well, I don't know what to tell you.
On a related note, last Wednesday was St. Nicholas Day, an unusual combination of holiday and child torture here. This is the basic premise:
St. Nicholas goes around to every house to find out if children are naughty or nice. If they're nice they get chocolate and fruit, and if they're bad they receive coal or a potato. Not too unfamiliar to American Santa Claus, right? Well--
St. Nicholas is accompanied by an angel and the devil. The devil's sole job is to scare the crap out of kids. Which he does with an incredibly high success rate. Children are scared to high hell about the possibility of the devil putting them in a sac and taking them to Spain to do God knows what.
Absolutely no one has good memories about St. Nicholas' visits when they were kids. This is the Dresden Firebombing of a Czech toddler's life--announcements of the impending St. Nick causes explosions of tears, excrement to be accidentally released, children to hide for cover. And the only reason they keep doing it is because "My father did it to me, so I will do it to my son."
Adults and older children dress up as the threesome of holy figures and go to parties. Fine. But the importance of St. Nicholas' Day isn't parties, it's causing some poor 4-year-old to wet their pants.
She smiles at me slyly, like she knows she's going to get to say her punchline. "The 25th," I say.
She laughs and shakes her head. "No. Christmas is twenty-four." (Hana is a pre-intermediate student).
"Well, some people celebrate on the twenty-fourth in America, but...," I search for proof why I am right, because, clearly, I am right. "Aha! Christmas is a celebration of Jesus' birthday, which is on the 25th, so--"
"No," Hana interrupts. "Jesu was born on 24."
I try to placate her. "Like at midnight?"
"No. Between eight and ten."
As an English teacher you learn to let things slide if your students insist on them. Case in point, a student of mine insisted that the Czech alphabet was the same as English's. "It's sort of the same," I try to concede. "But you have six more characters, so it's not quite the same." Marek shakes his head. "No. They are the same." Whatever Marek. I don't care if you think 32 equals 26. Christmas, though, is more important. I look at Hana's calendar. They get off the 25th and 26th as well.
"What are those holidays then, Hana?"
"The 1st and 2nd day of Christmas," she says assuredly, and I decide to give up the argument. If you believe there is a second day of Christmas two days after your official Christmas and one day after actual Christmas, well, I don't know what to tell you.
On a related note, last Wednesday was St. Nicholas Day, an unusual combination of holiday and child torture here. This is the basic premise:
St. Nicholas goes around to every house to find out if children are naughty or nice. If they're nice they get chocolate and fruit, and if they're bad they receive coal or a potato. Not too unfamiliar to American Santa Claus, right? Well--
St. Nicholas is accompanied by an angel and the devil. The devil's sole job is to scare the crap out of kids. Which he does with an incredibly high success rate. Children are scared to high hell about the possibility of the devil putting them in a sac and taking them to Spain to do God knows what.
Absolutely no one has good memories about St. Nicholas' visits when they were kids. This is the Dresden Firebombing of a Czech toddler's life--announcements of the impending St. Nick causes explosions of tears, excrement to be accidentally released, children to hide for cover. And the only reason they keep doing it is because "My father did it to me, so I will do it to my son."
Adults and older children dress up as the threesome of holy figures and go to parties. Fine. But the importance of St. Nicholas' Day isn't parties, it's causing some poor 4-year-old to wet their pants.
posted by Avimaan @ 7:42 PM
1 Comments:
At 9:34 PM,
Mark Mulligan said…
I thought there were 12 days of Christmas.
And when I was little, we had some St. Nicholas Day action ... I think it was some sort of holdover from my mother's polish upbringing. Anyway, I always heard you put your shoes out in the hallway, and that's what St. Nicholas would fill. One time on a business trip to West Virginia my father brought back this big piece of coal; it sat in the backyard for years as a constant threat of what would happen if one were a bad boy.
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