The origin of Christmas

In pre-Christian times, the Christmas season was dedicated to the celebration of the solstice. The most important days of the celebration were the 21st and 22nd of December, when the sun notionally reaches the Tropic of Capricorn and the longest night of the year, the winter solstice, occurs. It was celebrated with a night vigil during which various rituals were performed to ensure an abundant harvest, with plenty of food and good health for the coming year. On the morning of December 22, the Sun was welcomed as it began to approach the Earth again. People at that time made only minimal use of artificial lighting (fire), so they lived up to 16 hours a day in gloomy half-light or total darkness. This, together with the mythical-poetic imagery of the time, caused them understandable anxiety; the return of the light was therefore a major turning point in the life of the whole community. How deeply rooted this phenomenon is in our culture is evidenced by the folk sayings about the lengthening day that are still in use today: “On the Nativity of God a chicken does hop”, “on New Year’s Day a chicken steps away”, “on Three Kings Day another jump away”, “on Groundhog Day an hour more they say”, etc. (Note: the Czech sayings are translated into English as best as possible to maintain the meaning and rhyme)

Christianity later took advantage of these turning points in the astronomical year and added its own celebrations, filled with new content. The fact that Christ, the “light of the world” as he is called in the Bible, is born in the middle of one of the longest nights has a deep symbolism. Although pagan rituals were gradually displaced by Christian festivals celebrating the birth of the Saviour, the celebration of Christmas is still permeated by customs of both origins. In addition to singing carols, making a nativity scene and attending midnight mass, we can encounter somewhat superstitious practices aimed at discerning the future or even influencing it, such as cutting up apples, placing candles in floating nutshells, leaving fish scales under a plate or sprinkling bones on fruit trees.

The origin of the word Vánoce, the Czech word for Christmas

There are several theories about the origin of the word Vánoce. The first, somewhat bizarre, does not admit to taking the term Vánoce from another language and points to its originality. It is claimed that the return of the sun was celebrated for twelve whole days and twelve nights. Each day thus symbolized one month of the year, of which there are also twelve. The day of the imaginary arrival of spring — the 4th day symbolizing April, with the designation “the fourth” supposedly later corrupted to “generous” — was celebrated especially exuberantly on that day. This whole period was called “o dvanácti nocích” (“the twelve nights”), then “o dvánnocích” (“Two nights”), and then “Vánoce” (“Christmas”). This interpretation is of a purely folk character and lacks any real etymological basis.

The second theory takes into account a possible development from the German word “Weihnachten”. This is probably derived from the Middle High German “zu den wîhen nahten” — meaning “on the sacred nights” — which may have been those pagan festivals celebrating the solstice. The Czech word Vánoce is then a so-called semi-calque: as the second part of “-noce” from the German ” —nachten” is literally translated. From the first part of Weih (in German “consecrated”, “sacred”) its phonetic form [vaj], is taken and transformed then to the more natural Czech [vá]: Vá-noce. (Christmas)

Like most European nations, Christmas is one of the biggest and most popular holidays of the year in the Czech Republic. Over the centuries, the Czech nation has created such a distinctive form of this holiday that the term “Czech Christmas” has a specific cultural meaning. It includes a rich tradition of customs, ceremonies and related folkloric expressions.