Yesterday was European Christmas, which again is Christmas Eve in the USA, and today was Christmas Day, which some refer to as the first day of Christmas and some refer to as the second day of Christmas since Christmas was last night. Yeah, I know it can be a bit confusing.
Anyway, today was the day to relax and watch Christmas fairy tales on German TV. Of course that meant watching the Drei Haselnüsse für Aschenbrödel, the German edition of Popelka.
Veselé Vánoce, Fröhliche Weihnachten, and Merry Christmas!
Like usual, we headed over to Oma and Opa's place for coffee and cake before going to church. This year, services were held both inside and outside.
We had our traditional Christmas dinner of buletten, sausages, and potato salad.
Tünde's getting older so der Weihnachtsmann didn't make an appearance this year but we still had presents.
I absolutely love my new "Best Guncle Ever" t-shirt.
This evening we met up with a few people for dinner at our favourite sushi place on Bölscherstraße. Afterwards it was on the beach at Müggelsee, where we went ice skating before, for a a Christmas sing-a-long.
Some of the songs I knew but there were several German songs that I'd never heard before. Fortunately the programmes contained the lyrics to all of the songs.
I still can't believe that Christmas is tomorrow.
Today is the fourth Advent Sunday and it's also the first night of Hanukkah. I came up to Berlin last night and Tünde started working on the list. There's always a list. I thought that last year's list had a lot but it's nothing compared to this year's mega-list.
I'm only here for a week, so let's see how much we accomplish by the 26th.
Czechland has its own church. The Czechoslovak Hussite Church (CČSH) is a Christian church that split away from the Roman Catholic Church and was established in 1920 following the end of WWI and creation of Czechoslovakia.
It started out as the Czechoslovak Church but in 1972, the name was changed to to emphasise the values of Jan Hus, the former Catholic priest who was burned at the stake in 1415, and creator of the Czech alphabet. I understand the church is a sort of Presbyterian and Episcopal mixture.
The most recent census results showed that there are less than 25.000 members of the church. In Czechland the church has 304 congregations that are divided in to five dioceses - Prague, Plzeň, Brno, Olomouc, and Hradec Králové. There are three congregations in the Bratislava Diocese in Slovakia.
The head of the church is called 'Patriarch' and clergy can be men or women. More than half of the priests are women. Future priests undergo training at the Hussite Faculty of Theology at Charles University.
Husův sbor, the Hussite Church building, at Botanická, is one of the first functionalist church buildings in Central Europe. It is the oldest functionalist building in Brno and this year celebrates 93 years.
Today is Mikuláš Day which means that I've opened the first five days of my sock advent calendar. So far five days and I still don't have two socks that match.
This may just drive me absolutely mad. Hopefully I'll get at a matching pair soon. The absolute worst case is that I won't get a matching sock until the 13th.
Here's the first sock from the advent sock calendar that I received from Tünde. A sock a day for 24 days. I wonder how long it will take until I get a matching pair.
After yesterday's Czechsgiving fiesta, today was spent cleaning up and relaxing. Today was also the first Advent Sunday. I can't believe that it's less than a month until Christmas.
Last year, my friend Adriana made me an Advent wreath as a Thanksgiving hostess gift. I loved it and I was so happy that she did it again this year. It's lovely and I'm sure that she must have spent a lot of time putting it together.
This year I received the coolest Advent calendar from Tünde. Instead of counting down the days until Christmas with a piece of chocolate, I'll be counting down the days with socks. Oh these wacky Germans. I can't wait to see how this works.
The Feast of the Three Kings, or the Epiphany, is on 6 January and it officially marks the end of the Christmas holidays. Even though the last Christmas public holiday is 26 December for St. Stephen's Day.
If you haven't taken down your Christmas tree yet then today's the day to do it.
The day commemorates the adoration of baby Jesus by the three kings Balthazar, Caspar, and Melchior, who brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
The tradition is to write on a door frame, in white chalk, the initials "K + M + B", the initials of the three wise men. In Czech it's Kaspar since the "K". And the little "plus" isn't a plus sign, it's a Christian cross.
Out on YouTube I found the traditional Czech Christmas song My tři králové jdeme k vám (We Three Kings are Coming to You).
The Tiergarten is the most popular park in Berlin. It is 210 hectares (520 acres) which makes it the third largest urban garden in Germany.
It was founded as a game and hunting area for the aristocracy back in 1527. Eventually it became a public park.
There are over 8500 trees so it's a great green space in the city. The Tierpark gets more than 1,7 million visitors a year.
Claudia surprised her parents, Tünde, and I with a trip to the Christmas in the park event. It was so nice. There were Christmas lights everywhere.
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| The Czech Bear |
As you entered in to the park you passed an exhibit of Berlin Bears where each bear is decorated to represent every country and the bears are lined up holding hands as a symbol for peace and tolerance.
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| The USA Bear |
It was cold last night so which was the perfect excuse for some Glühwein along as we walked along the path.
This was a nice surprise and a fun Berlin family outing in the city.
Here's the 30-second German commercial that I found out on YouTube.
Again, 24 December in Central Europe is Christmas. In the USA, and the UK, the 24th is Christmas Eve and the 25th is Christmas Day. In the UK, the 26th is Boxing Day which isn't a thing in the U.S.
In Czechland, and Germany, the 24th, the 25th and the 26th of December are public holidays. Like all public holidays you hope that they don't fall on the weekend because then you lose the free day off.
In Germany, the 25th and 26th are Erster Weihnachtstag and Zweiter Weihnachtstag, respectively the First and Second Christmas Day. The 26th is also Stephanstag (St. Stephen's Day).
In Czechland, the 24th is Štědrý den. The 25th is první vánoční svátek and the 26th is druhý vánoční svátek, the First and Second Christmas Day with the 25th also called Boží hod vánoční (the Christmas Feast) and the 26th also being Svátek svatého Štěpána (St. Stephen's Day).
Today we started out with Oma's typical German breakfast. This is coffee with fresh bread rolls, meats, cheeses, butter, home made jams, and hard-boiled eggs.
We went for a walk around town for a couple of hours and then just relaxed for the rest of the day. There are always fairly tales on German TV and of course we had to watch Drei Haselnüsse für Aschenbrödel which is the German version of Popelka. It's always on TV in what used to be East Germany. It's not as popular in Western Germans. Also for some reason, in the east, Cinderella is "Aschenbrödel" but in the west they say "Aschenputtel".
This afternoon Oma put out another Christmas feast.
We had duck and goose, with potatoes and gravy, dumplings, red and green cabbage. It was delicious!
Dinner was way better with everyone here in Berlin than it was during last year's Covid Christmas where I joined them for dinner on Skype.
While we were celebrating Christmas last night with the Weihachtsmann it seems that the Czechs were fighting with Santa Claus.
Řízení letového provozu ČŘ, Air Traffic Control of the Czech Republic, is responsible for the airspace above Czech territory. They put out a video on Twitter that Supersonic Ježíček submitted his flight plan and was doing Mach 9 (11.113 km/hr or 6905 mph) through Czech airspace.
Remember that Santa doesn't bring the presents. Ježíček does. In the following video I found out on YouTube, the Czech military shoots Santa out of the sky and then tanks surround him. At the end of the video there is a disclaimer that neither Santa or any reindeer were injured in the making of this video. You'e got to love the dark Czech sense of humour.
The Czech police went even darker. They put out a public service video to illustrate the dangers of driving while SMSing (texting). In the video, Santa gets distracted while driving and has an accident. The Czech police come to the rescue by taking over his delivery route.
Veselé Vánoce! Fröhliche Weihnachten! Merry Christmas everyone!
We went over to Oma and Opa's place for coffee and sweets. In the early afternoon we usually go to church where the local kids put on a Christmas pageant. Due to Covid restrictions in Germany the pageant was held outside.
Tünde sang a few songs and she ended up with a sack full of presents. We then opened presents.
I must have been a pretty good boy this past year because I did pretty well.
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