In the Czech Republic the Christmas season greeting is Vesele Vanoce! Aside from the language, there are more cultural differences in the celebration of this international feast than you might think.

We decorate the Christmas tree on the morning of the 24th. Usually we eat lightly during the day so we can be assured of being really hungry in the evening. Some people do not eat at all. It is believed that if you fast until dinner, you will see a golden pig on the sky. In the early evening everybody sits down around the table for the Christmas dinner. Tradition demands that the first course is fish soup, basically the head of a carp cooked with some vegetables. The main dish is fried carp with cold potatoes and a vegetable salad. The meal finishes with the Christmas cookies and lots of different sweeties, some of which has to be made a couple of weeks before Christmas.

When all the feasting is over and no one has swallowed any fish bones, we distribute the presents and play some traditional games. Fortune telling games include pouring hot lead into water or cutting an apple in the middle. The shape of the cooled lead or the pattern of the apple seeds, reveals one’s fortune. Chritsmas Day itself and the following days are usually spent with relatives, enjoying fully the Christmas season.

You can make your Christmas a bit special this year by trying a typical Czech pudding:

Ingredients:
- 1 kg flour
- 2 tsp salt
- 200 g sugar
- 20 g vanilla sugar
- Lemon skin, almonds
- Raisins (let them soak in tea or rum before using)
- 20-25 g butter
- 3 yolks
- 50-60 g yeast
- 500 ml milk

Mix flour with all powdery ingredients. Prepare a leaven – little amount of milk and sugar + broken yeast – and leave it rise in a warm place (15-20 minutes). Add leaven to the flour and blend a bit. Then add milk, stirred yolks and melted butter. Mix very well. The dough has to be quite tough. Then cover the bowl with a cloth and leave it to rise in a warm place for about an hour.

Separate the dough into nine pieces and roll out into ropes. Take four ropes and plait them together. Then do the same with three. Stack the plait of three ropes onto the first plait. Finally, take the remaining two ropes, twist them together and put on the top. Stick the ends well to each other. Daub it with a stirred egg mixed with milk, sprinkle some almonds on the top and bake in a medium hot oven until it is gold-brown (about 45 minutes).
Enjoy, or dobrou chut!