Czech Christmas, Part VI: Obsessive cleaning disorder

by Iva Skoch on

I am not sure how it is in other countries, but Czech women (those over 40, at least) have this idea that Christmas would be “completely ruined” if their house was not completely spotless. They literally spend the weeks leading up to Christmas by cleaning obsessively, washing all windows, cleaning the carpets, taking collections of crystal from the shelves and dusting them…

I have nothing against cleaning in principle, but doing all of this before Christmas–which is already one of the most stressful times of the year–seems counter-productive.

Last time I asked people why it is so important to clean before Christmas, I didn’t get the answers I was hoping to get. It had nothing to do with cleansing thy soul, so to speak. It was either A) other women were doing it and she would look bad if she didn’t or B) it wouldn’t be Christmas if everything weren’t clean. Nothing like good circular logic to get the holiday spirit flowing!

Czech Christmas, Part V: Must eat exotic fruit

by Iva Skoch on

Blogging about Czech Christmas this week made me realize how much of the so-called Christmas tradition is related to our experiences–or traumas–from communism.

To give you an example…Czechs love to eat exotic fruit around Christmas time – pineapples, oranges, kiwis, plus more things that I can’t identify by name and that certainly don’t grow in this latitude. This clearly comes from communism: exports from non-communist countries were not allowed. Only around Christmas time, the stores would get special shipments of bananas, oranges and nuts, and it was a big treat! (Come to think of it, I wonder where those special shipments came from back then…Santa Castro?)

There were a couple of problems with the concept. First of all, the lines went out the door when the word got out: “They have bananas!” There was also a strict limit on how much one family could buy. I think it was about two pounds per family. Of course, the Czech are sly people so they would have multiple family members dispersed throughout the line to “fool the system,” and buy more stuff.

To this day, Czech still eat exotic fruit on Christmas, although now the stores are chock-full with bananas, oranges and kiwis any time of the year. Old habits die hard.

Czech Christmas, Part II: Marathon of sexist fairy tales

by Iva Skoch on

One of the Czech Christmas traditions is watching fairy tales on TV. Around Christmas time, all Czech channels show fairy tales virtually 24/7. All generations of families watch them together–over and over and over–and enjoy seeing the good guy win for the 74th time.

This is actually a really cute tradition, at least if you are not thinking about the “seemingly positive” messages in those fairy tales. Once you start analyzing the plots, you can’t see past the cliches.

Some of them clearly bring out the demons of Czech history, much like the skepticism about Santa I blogged about yesterday. You can’t help but notice that the bad guy is almost always either German or Russian. When I watched a fairy tale marathon with my niece, I had a hard time explaining to her why the prince always picks the prettiest girl–at first sight–without even pretending he likes her for who she is. In the Czech version of Cinderella, the prince doesn’t even recognize her when she is not wearing an evening dress. In fact, he makes fun of her. Then, you always have the evil stepmother with the evil stepsister, who–thank goodness–is never as pretty as the main character and thus, her prospects to marry well are murky. (Photo: Greedy stepmother/homely stepsister combo from the Czech movie version of Cinderella).

Needless to say, gym memberships go up exponentially after the holidays.