This is a re-posting of a blog from 2020 about Christmas in Prague, where my husband and I lived for a year.
We spent Christmas in Prague and were introduced to its customs by the Czech couple, Vladimir and Milada Reznick, who shared their apartment with us. The first tradition we encountered was a visit from Svaty Mikuláš. Svaty Mikuláš (Czech for Saint Nicholas) descends from heaven on a golden cord held by angels, as he returns to earth for his gift-giving rounds each year. In the European advent calendar, St. Nicholas pays a visit to children during the first week of December, bearing gifts of sweets to the well-behaved. He is traditionally accompanied by a devil (Čert) and an angel (Anděl ). Some friends of mine arranged for me to be visited, and luckily St. Nick gave me a present. The devil is sometimes portrayed as Krampas in a scary costume, usually in the public square along with St. Nick and the angel.
Vladimir and Milada purchased a Christmas tree – it appeared one evening – and it was lit with real candles! We lived in fear that it would catch fire. but Milada assured us it rarely happened. Right. Good that I couldn’t read the Prague newspaper!
The traditional Christmas Eve meal is carp soup. The Czechs love polévka, or soup, and Milada was a wonderful soup maker – especially gulašova polévka (gulash soup) and dršťková polévka (tripe soup). Every family would buy a huge carp from enormous tanks found on the streets around the city. They were filled with icy water (it was December after all) and huge carp slowly swimming around in them. The men who sold the fish were in their shirt sleeves with the sleeves rolled up and their forearms were blue from fishing in the tanks and pulling out a fish for you!
Once purchased, the carp was taken home and placed in water in the bathtub and kept until Christmas Eve. (Caveat: Never let your children name the carp) At that point, it would be dispatched, some of the meat saved for the next day, and the rest made into carp soup. Which is, by the way, delicious.
The traditional Christmas dinner was carp (kapr) schnitzel, made with the fresh carp fillets, along with potato salad. This might seem strange – potato salad at Christmas – but I swear the Czechs make the absolutely best potato salad in the world. And of course the fish was yummy and delightfully fresh (no wonder there).
And the sweets. Each Czech is born with a sweet tooth. There is a Christmas bread called Vánočka, which gets its name from the Czech word for Christmas, Vánoce. It’s a braided cake made with raisins and almonds. There are also cookies, lots and lots of cookies, Vánoční cukroví / Christmas cookies. We ended our Christmas meal with a variety of those, along with fruit dumplings that Milada made to perfection. These are usually made with plums (if available) and sprinkled with sugar and poppy seeds.
In the Czech tradition, I wish you Veselé Vánoce a Šťastný Nový Rok
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Ms. Hedges has cleverly entwined two stories in this, the tenth outing of her Victorian mystery series. The setting is London in 1868, and the city itself quickly becomes a main character because of the colorful, detailed descriptions the author creates for the reader.
Carol Hedges is the successful UK writer of 11 books for teenagers/Young Adults. Her novel Jigsaw was long-listed for the Carnegie Medal. She is currently writing a series of Victorian Crime Fiction novels, set in 1860s London and published under her own imprint: Little G Books: Diamonds & Dust, Honour & Obey, Death & Dominion and now Murder & Mayhem.
I have so many fellow bloggers who post about their walks in their beautiful environs (England, Ireland, Scotland, Spain) that I am almost embarrassed to tell you that mine are largely in church parking lots and on sidewalks. We do have a trail in our vicinity (the American Tobacco Trail) but getting to it is a problem, and I hate having to drive to get someplace to walk.
The first is a pattern I spotted in the sod of an area in our development. Sod turns brown in the fall – at least ours does, and also soaks up water so walking on it is like sinking into a wet sponge – but in this part, it browned in an interesting pattern. Not sure what caused it.
grass in the field as ‘nature paths.”
and the creek that runs through the eastern part of the property.
Foxe and the Black Beast is the tenth in the Ashmole Foxe series, and I’ve read every one of them and reviewed most because I find the central character, Ashmole Foxe, so compelling. I’ve enjoyed the way he has evolved from a dandified, hedonistic, man-about-town to a settled, newly married man with a beautiful and very intelligent wife. In this latest adventure, the Dean of Norwich calls on Foxe, a rare bookseller and now recognized as the premier investigator in the city, to find the killer of a member of the clergy. The man, Reverend Bing, who insists on being called Prebendary Bing (a type of canon who has a role in the administration of a cathedral), is found dead at the base of the front steps, his head bashed in.
William Savage grew up in Hereford, on the border with Wales and took his degree at Cambridge. After a working life largely spent teaching and coaching managers and leaders in Britain, Europe and the USA, he retired to Norfolk, where he volunteers at a National Trust property and started to write fiction as a way of keeping his mind active in retirement. He had read and enjoyed hundreds of detective stories and mystery novels and another of his loves was history, so it seemed natural to put the two together and try his hand at producing an historical mystery. To date, he has focused on two series of murder-mystery books, both set in Norfolk between 1760 and around 1800; a period of turmoil in Britain, with constant wars, the revolutions in America and France and finally the titanic, 22-year struggle with France and Napoleon.
I truly believe Thorne Moore could write a five-star book about a paper bag. She has challenged herself by writing in books of different genres and her readers (including myself) have found them all compelling. I did not read the first book in this series (Inside Out) but no matter, this book qualifies as a stand-alone. I chose it because I wanted to see how the author fared with science fiction, and she fares very well indeed.
Thorne Moore grew up in Luton, near London, but has lived in Pembrokeshire in West Wales for the last 35 years. Her father was a Labor councilor and her mother once got the sack for calling her boss a male chauvinist pig, so she developed strong views about the way the world works. Her headmaster advised her to study law, but that implied a career in law, and the only career she wanted was as a writer. So she studied history instead, and nine years later, after a spell working in a library, she returned to Wales to run a restaurant with her sister. She did finally get her law degree, but these days, she writes. When she’s not writing, she makes miniature furniture, through her craft business, Pear Tree Miniatures.
This is the heartwarming and remarkable story of Aleen Isabel Cust, England’s first female veterinary surgeon, and a book I thoroughly enjoyed. The author explains that while the main character is real and many of the events in her life are recorded, this is not a biography. But what she’s created is completely believable.
Penny Haw is also the author of The Wilderness Between Us, winner of the WFWA 2022 Star Award in the general category; and a children’s book called Nicko, The Tale of a Vervet Monkey on an African Farm. She worked as a journalist and columnist for more than three decades, with bylines in many of South Africa’s leading newspapers and magazines before yielding to a lifelong yearning to create fiction. Her stories feature remarkable women, illustrate her love for nature, and explore the interconnectedness of all living things. Writing is her profession and lifelong passion. She lives near Cape Town.
This coffee shop has the proud distinction of being the oldest continually running restaurant in North Carolina, serving Tar Heels for nearly a century.
A long-time reader, best-selling author D. Wallace Peach started writing later in life when years of working in business surrendered to a full-time indulgence in the imaginative world of books. She was instantly hooked.
SaylingAway 