Holidays Our Way

And how about your holidays out there?
Do you eat turkey for Christmas dinner like the Americans?
What about Santa? Isn’t it ridiculous? …
I often get questions like that. Not a surprise, huh? Sure, we live abroad but besides of that each of the three of us was born in a different country…

Compare to the locals our holiday celebration starts already somewhere in the mid November. (In America I haven’t noticed anything about celebration of the Saint Nicholas (death) on 6th December.)
This is a Dutch tradition when the children can put their shoes by the fireplace to receive some goodies from Sinterklaas (Saint Nicholas). Already that early arrives Sinterklaas by boat to Holland with his helper de Zwarte Piet (Black Peter). We didn’t celebrate Sinterklaas much this year since we were on the move lately.
The Czech celebration of Mikuláš is less exuberant but not less amusing. We just don’t know de Zwarte Piet. We grew up with Devils and Angels. Though the intentions of Zwarte Piet of the Devils is actually very similar. Both like to take the naughty children in the bag to take them to the hell or … to Spain! (the Dutch version)
Maarten was quite good at distinguishing between those ‘two’ holy men speaking about Sinterklaas to his dad and about Mikuláš to me! But then we have another good man in town. The 'local' Santa. How do we explain him? To be honest now it’s just up to Maarten to call Santa Mikuláš or Sinterklaas or simply Santa.

And we are not there yet!
For us Czechs Mikuláš is not that great celebration like for the Dutch. The Mikuláš Eve used to be just a ‘foretaste’ of the, for us children, most important holiday of the year, the Christmas.
I’m sorry to admit this but as time goes by I start to believe that the magic of Christmas I used to experience back in Czech is impossible to imitate anywhere in the world. Or is it just the sentiment of every childhood?

Anyway Rob doesn’t have such romantic and tender memories of the Dutch Christmas (I guess I know why). But I always wanted to pass on this magic to my children. The Czech Christmas means so many wonderful traditions, carols, cookies, a special Christmas Eve dinner and the atmosphere you just have to experience yourself. (Even the people are nicer to each other starting with the Advent…)

O.K. I don’t prepare carp for the Christmas Eve dinner anymore but we still eat fish and potato salad. And since we have Maarten I also bake the famous cookies! It seems Rob is adapting pretty well (except for the carp than) but there is still a little problem in our multicultural family.

Who is going to bring the presents?
As I understood there is also already someone who brings Christmas presents to the Dutch children – de Kerstman (an American influence reversely?).
In Czech every child experiences the excitement awaiting the arrival of Ježíšek (the child Jesus). First we write letters to him with our wishes. Then we put it on the window and hope he will find our letters and fulfill our dreams just on the Christmas Eve. (Though Ježíšek may never read my wishes correct. This was obvious at the big packages filled with (tea-) towels every year again and again…)
Anyway de Kerstman and Ježíšek are another two ‘holy somebody’ who we should incorporate in our holidays. To be honest I don’t mind it at all and forgive me if Maarten calls Ježíšek Santa, Mikuláš , Kerstman or Sinterklaas.
Besides of all of this Maarten calls Ježíšek 'ježeček' (= a little hedgehog). This is not only a wrong pronunciation since he proudly translates it to his daddy as 'een egeltje' which means indeed a little hedgehog in Dutch.

Please, don’t worry if you can’t follow anymore.
Till now Maarten seems to like all of our holiday traditions no matter their origin and how we call it. We all have a wonderful time with our mixed up holidays.
And that’s what counts.