Traditional Christmas Celebration
Christmas in Slovakia are very traditional, family oriented and full of chaos, love and laugh. Family is the most important part of the holidays.As Slovakia is mostly Christian country so many tradition come from this even if family doesn’t support any religion anymore.Families prepare for this time weeks if not month ahead. Traditional Christmas tree, we DON’T have stockings as you may be used to. We bake loads and loads of special Christmas pastry and sweets, most known are gingerbreads but some traditional are Linecké, Grilážky, Vanilkové rožky, Medvedie labky and many many more.You start the day fasting until the Christmas dinner as way of humility and respect to the little Jesus who came into the world. In the later days people came up with the saying “if you can fast until the dinner , you will see a gold pig” as a motivation for the little kiddos lol.While preparing the dinner table you always prepare one extra plating for people who don’t have anywhere to stay or for those who aren’t with us anymore.Dinner starts with special waffles with honey and garlic so that you will be healthy and wealthy all year, then traditional fish soup and lastly the main course consisting of mostly carp and potato salad.After the dinner we wait for little Jesus to give us all the gifts, usually mother plays with the kids while fathers prepare and put under the tree all the presents and then they jingle the bell on the tree to mimic little Jesus informing us that he was here with us and that gifts are ready. And then all the joy of opening gifts comes, yes we open the gifts after the dinner on the 24th of December. 26th and 27th are usually days when you visit the rest of you family and in smaller scale repeat the christmas dinner and gifts opening
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