Discover Something New #19

Table of Contents:
-My schedule the last few months
-Announcement of posting of essays
-Announcement of school completetion
-Review of recent readings
-Announcement of posting "Day Two of Xtrav"
-"Discover Something New: Czech Christmas"
-Season's Greetings

Hello my friends! It’s been a while since you’ve heard from me! The last couple of months built up to a pretty crazy climax, which I’ll summarize: Last time you heard about my balanced and gradual slide into insanity, by adding interesting classes until I had twice as many as most students, by rejoining Christian groups I used to be involved with, and by trying to start building a base of teaching hours. The main problem is that this was my last semester, so as soon as January hits I need to be teaching full time to support myself. This is difficult because teaching jobs are hard to find in the middle of the academic year in anything but piece-meal, so when I had opportunities to take on students in October or November I felt obliged to start with them immediately. This meant that just as I was adding more teaching hours my classes were gradually getting more difficult as final exams approached, causing a spiraling process of dog-paddling and tread-mill running and leading to a climatic final two weeks of very little sleep or coherent thought. Now THERE’s a sentence for you! Can you tell I’ve been churning out essays like a tornado tearing through Harvard? :-)
[That brings me to my first purpose of this letter, to say that I’ve posted some of my recent essays on my blog for those of you who are WAY too bored over the holidays. www.discoverthepenguinsworld.blogspot.com. Click on “Lexical Creations” on the right. I’m posting three essays, one on All Quiet on the Western Front (entitled At Any Price), another on the psychological effects of oppressive occupation as observed in examples of “insanity” in Czech literature (The Days of the Madman), and the last (and most recommended), a mostly biographical piece on my WWII veteran professor (A Long Road Home). They are rushed and unrefined, as I had to write about 25 pages my last week, but some of you might find some of them interesting.]
So despite my traditional madness I survived, even getting more sleep than in many other crazy periods of my life (only one all-nighter!), and now I have completed all the requirements for my B.A. I don’t FEEL like a graduate, but that’s probably because I’m pretty sure that I’ll return to school some day.
So now I just have teaching, and most lessons are on holiday for two weeks, so I have a real chance to kick back and catch up a bit. I’m very glad of some time to read again, and I’ve felt very diverse and intellectual in my readings lately. After a few months of Czech literature (everything from Kafka’s Metamorphosis (again!) to Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being) and novels of 20th century turbulence (All Quiet on the Western Front (WWI, Germany) and Darkness at Noon (Soviet Russia)), I’ve also almost finished The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (Ruth Benedict’s classic profile of Japanese culture and psychology), and am now tearing through A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry’s portrayal of the streets of India (thanks Lin!). I’ve also been getting a lot from the Psalms in my Bible reading (O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. Ps 63). For my next book I’m looking into Haruki Murakami, a Japanese novelist who’s very popular right now (any recommendations on a specific book of his, you Japanese reading this?). The problem is that I’m trying to actually decrease my personal library, because of the possibility of leaving CZ at the end of the summer, and not wanting to drag 100s of books with me or worry about burdening someone here with them. So I guess I’ll be limited to the English selections at the Prague libraries.
Anyway, besides reading I’ve also had time to return to some of my other projects. That brings me to my third point of this letter (the second being that I’m done with school), which is that the 2nd day of Xtrav (Extreme Travel) has been completed and posted on www.youtube.com/extravpenguin. Day Two starts with episode 15. If you got bored of it before, give it one more chance. This is the day that the trip truly began to live up to the X part of the title for me, and I hope that comes across. I had to use the voice recorder much more than the first day, so I apologize that the medium is not quite as engaging as the first day, but I hope that the material is.
My fourth point is that it’s high time you all got a chance to Discover Something New!
Seeing as Christmas is in 2 days (1 for some of us. Wait, I’ll get to that!), I thought it would be appropriate to discuss Christmas traditions, and since I’m in Czech Republic I though I’d share a little of Czech traditions with you. For you Czechs, or for those of you who have heard from me on this topic before this won’t be anything new, but there are many people on this list who know nothing about the fascinating array of Czech traditions...

Without a doubt the one Czech cultural element that is the most distinct from America is the way they celebrate holidays. Easter, Halloween, and even Witch Burning Day all have their distinct peculiarities for an American observer, but Christmas draws the line between our two cultures clearer than anything else. Maybe it’s because we assume that such an international holiday will be celebrated the same way internationally, but cultural has its ways of making itself felt, globalization or no globalization.
The first striking difference for an American in CZ for Christmas is that here Christmas is essentially celebrated on the 24th of December. This is a little confusing, because there seems to be a notion for some Czechs that Christmas Day is still the 25th, and that Czech celebrations take place on Christmas Eve. But because all significant “Christmassy” activities take place on the 24th, in practice everyone refers to the 24th as “Christmas.” I warned you it was confusing. This custom is followed by much of Central Europe, as well as Scandinavian countries, Jordan, Japan, and Columbia (those of you from these countries, correct me if I’m wrong, please!). I imagine that in Czech Republic we’re in a cultural transition, and that in another 100 years all lingering notion of celebrating on Christmas Eve will fade and the 24th will simply be Christmas.
The 24th is a day filled with traditions and celebration. There’s not necessarily an early start, though, because presents are opened at the very end of the day, not first thing in the morning (they may seem to be more patient, but let’s not forget they still open presents a day earlier than Americans!
There is a tradition to not eat the entire day until dinner. This is made more difficult by the customary day-long activity in the kitchen, preparing dinner and the essential “Christmas sweets,” as everyone calls them when speaking English. More accurate would be “Christmas cookies,” which are of various shapes and sorts, many of which are not dissimilar to our sugar cookies in shapes of stars and crescent moons. These “sweets” are absolutely essential at any Czech Christmas, and much fuss is made of them; for good reason, they’re delicious! So those who desire to honor the tradition of fasting all day face no easy task, but they have motivation. Tradition says that those who make it to dinner without eating will see a golden pig. That’s right, a gold pig. I’ve never gotten a straight explanation of this, so don’t ask me!
When dinner arrives another key difference becomes quickly obvious: those who love their traditional American Christmas dinner will be shocked, as not a single item is the same. No eggnog, not turkey or ham, no pies. The main course is fried carp, and on the side will be potato salad and rolls. The other elements are various, but carp and potato salad are a must. However it seems that there’s a constant debate among Czechs about this custom, as a significant number of them can’t stand carp for one reason or another. I quite enjoy the meal, but this is often heard with surprise from those who are against the tradition. Some complain about the smell, others about the bones (you do need to shift through very carefully), others about the cruelty of preparation; and that brings us to another interesting point.
The carp is not picked up at the nearest super market the day before the meal, not by any means! This leads to a recounting of my strongest moment of culture shock ever experienced in the Czech Republic. It was my first Christmas season here in 2003, and I was walking home a few days before Christmas when I noticed a large booth set up where no booth had been before. On further investigation I discovered a vat about the size of a small Jacuzzi, filled to the brim with large carp, and the cracks filled in with water. Curious, I decided to stand back and observe the proceedings. In a few minutes a mother and young daughter came by, and the girl (probably 7-8 years old), gazed excitedly into the teeming vat. Finally she pointed to one of the fish, and the man at the booth grabbed a net and deftly scooped the fish out, giving the others a little more fin-room. Holding the foot long+ carp, the man asked the mother something, and the mother answered. I later learned that the question was essentially “dead or alive?” The man slapped the fish on the table, picked up a wooden mallet, and, with the little girl watching happily, he delivered a powerful and solid whack to the fish’s forehead. He held the carp firmly as it thrashed like a boa constrictor when its tail gets run over, and then wrapped the fish in paper and handed it over. The mother and happy child walked away, leaving me on the sidelines with my jaw resting on my chest. The main shock for me was that the young girl had chosen the victim and watched the execution without losing her contended smile for a moment, just going to show that Czechs are much more willing to accept that their meat comes from dead animals than Americans are.
The strange thing is that as difficult as this is for me to watch even now (I tried to watch a few days ago, and had to leave after the bludgeoning), whenever I see the carp-vats on the street I know it’s Christmas, and it’s actually difficult for me to feel at all “Christmassy” in CZ without these stands, which pop up everywhere. This year I didn’t see one until Friday, to which I credit my serious lack of Christmas spirit this year.
But remember that the man asked “dead or alive?”? Yes, sometimes people take the carp home alive. What do they do with it, several days before Christmas? Why, they keep it in their bathtub, of course! Really, I’m not joking. No seriously, they keep the fish in their bath tubs until it’s time for the “man of the house” (you can always tell who wears the pants in the family by who kills the carp) to kill it and clean it. How do they take baths? I never got the courage to ask this directly, but at least one former student of mind says she remembers taking a bath with the carp when she was young. Often children also name the din-... err, carp. But what if they get attached to it? Well, there’s even a tradition to address that. Some families (not many) keep the carp several days until the 24th, and then let the children release it into the river. Christmas charity. However, since the fish are raised in captivity it’s common knowledge that they never survive more than a few days.
The dinner of fried carp and potato salad complete, the Czech family turns to the tree, which thus far has very few presents under it. The children are taken out of the room, so that Ježíšek can come with their presents. That’s right, Ježíšek (pronounced "Yezheeshek"), which means little or baby Jesus, brings the presents, not Santa. Santa Clause is nothing more than a commercial import from the West here, so no stockings hung out to dry, no cookies and milk, no reindeer. Instead, baby Jesus brings the presents and a host of different traditions. This custom is followed also in Slovakia and Hungary.
The most interesting thing about Ježíšek for me is that he does not have a clear image. I made a habit of asking my students every year about how Ježíšek looks, and everyone has a different idea. Some really imagine a baby in a diaper dragging a sack of presents behind him, others see an old man with a long white beard, wearing clothes very reminiscent of Santa. Still others picture a ball of bright light hovering in the air, or a man wearing a thick green coat. The most creative answer I received came from the same student who bathed with carps, who said “well, I always imagined that Ježíšek was a big yellow hedgehog.” I was completely baffled until I found out months later that the Czech for hedgehog is ježik, and she had gotten these words mixed up as a child. Why yellow I’ll never know.
I’ve always been a little uncertain about Ježíšek, as I’ve never quite been able to get a firm grasp of how much mental connection there is to Ježíš, or Jesus. More and more, though, it seems to me that most Czechs make very little connection between the two, if for no other reason than that CZ is largely atheistic and Christmas has very little to do with Christ. This doesn’t really make me feel better, though.
After presents many people attend a midnight Christmas catholic mass. This is the only hour of the year when the churches are full. As far as what happens there, I really don’t know, because I haven’t managed to attend one yet. But I will this year, and hopefully in St. Vitus cathedral itself, in Prague castle. I’ll let you know if I find anything interesting.
With that I’ll let you all go back to enjoying your own Christmas. If you think of a particularly unique Christmas custom of your country or family I’d love to hear about it, so give it some thought. In any case, whatever country you find yourself in, I hope that you are surrounded by happiness and the joy of this season. We celebrate the day that God came to earth to live homeless, penniless, and infinitely loving. Whatever you believe, you have to admit that the very idea is worth celebrating; with gifts and decorations and gatherings of course, but especially with our hearts and minds. God bless and Merry Christmas. -Caleb