Saint Nicholas

“Wow, Mom! How did you do it!” I cried, full of genuine admiration and respect. “Years of diligence and sacrifice, my dear,” she answered with a sly smile. As usual.

Extremely tolerant. That is a simple definition of Czech society’s attitude to alcohol until nowadays. Beer is still cheaper than soda in Czech pubs. At the beginning of December you could meet something more than that in the streets: Drunk saints and devils holding one another’s shoulders to keep balance being watched by embarrassed angels.

“Mom, we were talking about St. Nicholas in school today! He is a very good saint and he brings fruits, nuts and candies for well-behaved children. I guess he could stop by ours!” I called on the first of December afternoon. “I don’t think so,” my mother answered, leaving me with my doubts about why the popular saint was not coming, when I considered myself a very well-behaved child.

Saint Nicholas was a fourth-century bishop and he was fair and generous. The tradition is both charming and scary. Three volunteers dressed as the saint in a bishop’s robe and tiara, a hairy devil with cow horns on his head, and a lovely angel with wings on his back are going from house to house. They are asking little children about their behavior and giving them candy as a gratuity for a song or little rhyme - a prayer in the past, before my nation’s loss of religious faith under the experience of the twentieth century. The custom takes place on 5th December, the evening before the estimated saint’s anniversary of death.

The colors of Saint Nicholas are red, white and golden and he wears a huge white beard, which could hide a child’s own uncle or grandpa. The devil is usually very horrifying, equipped with a sack, in which he is able to fetch a badly-behaved child right into hell. His colors are black, brown, and red. The angel wears white and silver, and he is covered by sparkling stardust. Very often he is played by a woman, who can find another surprising use of her wedding dress. Shaky mothers can make a deal with St Nicholas, or the devil, to take a promise from a deathly scared child not to bite nails any more, or hand over the pacifier for example.

Shop scarcity in the ‘80s wasn’t overwhelming or constant. The regime’s planned economy did manage to send some special kinds of goods. But they appeared in stores only seasonally, which explains why we saw strawberries in June, watermelons in July, or warm underwear in May when no one needed it. With almost iron causality, oranges, tangerines, and whole peanuts appeared a few weeks before Christmas. This made them a traditional gift for children from St. Nicholas.

“My mom said, Saint Nicholas is not coming to ours today,” I confided sadly to my friend in nursery school, “She said we don’t need to listen to the nonsense-speeches of drunk unpredictable creatures.”

The common problem of the Saint Nicholas tradition is that grateful families want to give some reward to the magic guests, as they took the trouble to come. This is usually a shot of high-percentage alcohol, in spite of the fact that it might already be a paid service. That is why it can happen that by the fifth family, the holy retinue is out of self-control. The only exception could be the angel, who is not drinking too much, because he doesn’t want to put his wedding dress in danger.

“Poor you! So, are you not going to get anything this evening?” my friend asked, full of sympathy. “Last year, when I was very little, of course, I peed in my pants when the devil jangled his chain, but then I got chocolate, tangerines and nuts in sugar,” he continued proudly.

I was devastated. When my mom picked me up from school, I went unusually quietly and I was staring into the dark hoping I could even see Saint Nicholas.

“Maybe you can put your sock on the window at home,” my mom suggested, “If you were a well-behaved child the real Saint Nicholas could fill it with some candies during the night.”

Wow! That was something! I ran to a drawer and found the longest sock I had, and laid it by the window. Long minutes before bedtime I knelt on a chair by the window in my pyjamas, and watched the snow slowly falling in the darkness. I could swear I had heard angel-bells in the distance.

The next morning the sock was full like the Little Prince’s snake, who had eaten an elephant. Tangerines, nuts and chocolate were in there. The scent of tangerines reminds me of childhood, snow, a silent evening, and the miracle of hope from that day. And I am sure that even one of thousands of Saint Nicholases in Czech streets in December must be the real saint.