Words with Feet

"And in every place she abandons she leaves something vital, it seems to me, and starts her new life somewhat less encrusted, like a lobster that has shed its skin and is for a time soft and vulnerable."

- E.B. White

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Location: Washington, DC

Monday, December 11, 2006

A Virtual Holiday Card

Made this for my family, since I won't be stateside for Christmas. Thought any friends in blogland might also enjoy it. (The first song is a traditional Slovak Christmas carol; the second is by Czech songwriter Jaromir Nehovica).

Thursday, December 07, 2006

'Tis the Season

One of my favorite essays by David Sedaris is a piece which illustrates the reality and fundamental humor of cultural differences. It's called "Six to Eight Black Men," so titled because in the Netherlands, Santa Claus is accompanied not by elves, but a band of former slaves. In the hundreds of years of Christmas lore, it seems that no one has taken the time to count these men, and so the Dutch speculate that Mr. Claus travels with roughly six to eight of them.

Sedaris spends the bulk of the text marveling at other, seemingly bizarre, Christmas tidbits from the Netherlands—nuggets of trivia depicting Santa Claus as an angular retired bishop of Turkey who now resides in Spain, and travels with his troops every winter to reward the good children. The bad ones go in his sack, to be either kicked by his six to eight counterparts or taken away from their homes.

I must thank Mr. Sedaris, because his prose provided me with an excellent transition into holiday chatter in the classroom. And, after reading about the somewhat violent manners of a Dutch Christmas, I was eager to learn what spending December in Slovakia might have in store for me.

First of all, Santa Claus is out of the equation. There is a specially designated "Saint Nicholas Day" on 6 December, but it's mainly for small children, and only involves the magical appearance of candy. For me, this meant the magical appearance of "Den a Noc" chocolates from Toney, and three giant foil wrapped candies from my adorable seminar class, which they'd placed on my desk before I entered the room. Traditionally, the children leave St. Nick their Christmas wish lists, which he is kind enough to deliver for them. (Because in Slovakia, children still hand-write their lists, rather than shooting an email to the North Pole like American kids now do).

"But wait a minute," I said. "If Saint Nicholas is bringing them candy, and there is no Slovak Santa—who exactly is he delivering these lists to?"

This is the point where, in America, the class would have slapped their palms to their foreheads and muttered "duh!" with that you're-so-out-of-the-loop inflection. However, being Slovak, my students just pointed a very large, very blank stare in my direction. Politely, of course.

"Come on," I prompted. "Who gives out the presents?"

"Little baby Jesus," answered a girl called Daniela, who stated the obvious by noting that Christmas is the day when Jesus was born. "He crawls through the window and fills your boots with presents."

Well, obviously. Because the kid doesn't have anything better to do on his own birthday.

We'd already read the Sedaris piece, so I ventured the question. "And he comes alone? No elves, no former slaves, no reindeer?" Mostly I was just curious as to how an infant could manage to carry that sack of gifts while he toddled his way around the world.

"He comes alone," volunteered Beata. "But on St. Nicholas Day, the angel and devil are with him."

This was demonstrated rather apparently yesterday, when people dressed as these characters trotted through the main square.

Of course, neither of these winter holidays hold a candle to what I can expect in the spring. Once we introduced Jesus as a character in this conversation, it was inevitable that we should also discuss Easter traditions. In Slovakia, though it is customary to dye and decorate eggs, there are no egg hunts or baskets of goodies, and the Easter Bunny has, erm, a slightly different meaning.

"So is there an Easter Bunny?" I asked. The students looked confused, so I described the American tradition of grown men in brightly colored bunny suits posing for pictures with children in shopping malls. They continued looking confused.

"Well," said Marta in a perfect deadpan, "Rabbit is part of Easter. But we don't take picture of them. We eat them."

Oh. How cute.

I asked if it seemed strange that American Easters involved such things—baskets, bunnies, egg hunts.

"Strange? No. Not really."

I figured this was because American media had trickled down to Slovak television stations, like the Simpsons, South Park, and Home Alone films already have. While this is true, the main reason American Easter doesn't seem weird to the Slovak population is because the Slovaks have their own bizarre ritual.

It seems that the Monday and Tuesday following Easter are bank holidays. On Monday, all the Slovak boys take buckets of water or bottles of what was consistently described as "very bad perfume" and hit the town, with a strong agenda to spray as many of their female friends as possible.

In a different class, I have two international students – a girl from Poland, and a girl from the Czech Republic – so I was able to get a second opinion on this as a universally Eastern European phenomenon. Poles rightfully believe this is an odd custom, and have nothing of the sort. The Czechs skip the very bad perfume and water buckets.

"But boys beat the girls," said the Czech girl. "On their asses. With hand or the tree branch." Lovely.

In recallinag this conversation to my handler, who's approximately my age and male, he affirmed that this is true of Slovakia as well. I must have been too caught up in the water-dumping and perfume-spraying to hear it from my class. The smirk on his face told me he'd done this many times, to many girls.

He added that sometimes the guys travel in groups, kidnap the girl, and dump her in a freezing swimming pool.

"We send the smallest guy to ring her doorbell, so she doesn't expect anything," Dušan explained. "Then, when she answers, we all grab her and carry her to the pool and throw her in."

"And what do the girls do for revenge?" The feminist in me hoped for some equally twisted payback, once the girls had all showered off the very bad perfume and dried themselves off from the pool. I imagined the Slovak women tying the men to trees, or dumping them in the Nitra River, or at the very least drenching them in very bad cologne.

"Oh, they can do it to the boys on the next day, but usually they don't. Really the only thing they can do is lock the door."

Let the holiday season begin….