FALL
Fall in Central Europe was a bleak affair with two occassions to look forward, to Saint Nicholas Feast Day on December 6th and Christmas. The Saint Nicholas tradition was odd because it was widely practiced in the strictly secular Czechoslovakia. It's a kind of Christmas rehearsal. Saint Nicholas comes to the door of homes with children, sometimes accompanied by Angel and Devil figures, and dispenses small gifts such as candy and chocolate. Somewhat cruelly, these small gifts were usually taken away immediately from us kids with promise getting them back at Christmas some 18 days later. This custom was always puzzling to me, but I think the reasons were purely economical; there just were not that many gifts to go around to satisfy the odd, back-to-back gift giving customs.
But wait, it gets weirder.
Traditionally all Christmas gifts were from the Christ Child (Jezisek). We had no Santa Claus figure and initially we kids believed that the Christ Child was our benefactor. This was in total absence of any religious education or the power of reason. Like most religeous tenets this did not invite a close scrutiny for common sense, but it remarkably survived under the Commies. At least it did for a while, until the Christ Child was magically transformed into Grandfather Frost. This was such a drastic change that our Prime Minister had to explain it in a speech just before Christmas in 1952. See below.
I spent 18 years living with Communism. It was dreary, frustrating, petty, dishonest, pretentious and downright boring. But, and here's the bottom line, we didn't know any better. We had no meaningful comparison. I was sixteen or seventeen when I managed to get some German popular culture magazines and started to listen to Radio Free Europe late at night hidden under the bed covers. Only then did it start to become apparent that life was different elsewhere.
I spent nine years in elementary school. The class size averaged about 30 and I am the only one who got away. When I visited my school a few years ago on a visit to Prague, I ran into the current principal who wanted to know what was I doing wandering about his school with a camera. We got to talking and he immediately noticed my accent. When I told him I lived in the United States, his reaction was kind of surprising. "At least someone from this school made it".
That is the way he saw it; an accomplishment of sorts.
Maybe it was; maybe not.
Calling Communism a "civilization" is a stretch; it was a societal order that was unsustainable economically and socially. The Communists ruled Czechoslovakia for 41 long years, yet they left very little in the way of a legacy. Yes, there are reminders of the Communists' uniformly unimaginative approach to residential architecture around the larger cities. And there are a couple of buildings in Prague that obscenely flash their brutalism pedigree. But on the whole, there's very little to remind us of the Communist years.
There is a monument to the victims of Communism in Prague that was unveiled in 2002. It consists of emaciated, nude bronze figures with gradually missing pieces. They are the vanishing people.
This is the legacy the Communists left behind after ruling this small, landlocked country with 13 million inhabitants between 1948 and 1989:
- 205,486 - sentenced to hard labor
- 248 - executed
- 4,500 - died in prison
- 327 - died while crossing the border
- 170, 938 - emigrated to the West
I am one of the 170,938. I am one of the lucky ones.
ANTONIN ZAPOTOCKY - Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia
Pre-Christmas Speech 1952
Women Comrades, men Comrades and our little Comrades!
Today in my pre-Christmas address, I'd like to speak to those who most like to gather around the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve: to our children and youth. As you grow up, you may not notice how everything has changed and is changing around us. Even the tradition of Christmas celebration is not without some change.
The trees are still brightly lit and decorated, presents are eagerly anticipated, but the Manger and Nativity scenes are disappearing. These mini re-enactments of the scene at the time of the birth of Christ used to be an integral part of our Christmas experience as we placed cutout paper figurines into boxes filled with moss. The little baby Christ, laying in a barn on a bale of straw alongside a bullock and an ass used to symbolize Christmas for us.
Why?
It was a reminder to the working classes and the needy that the poor belong in a barn. Alongside a bullock and an ass. If the Christ Child could be born and live in a barn, why not you and why couldn't your children also be born on a bale of dirty straw?
That's how the rich and powerful spoke to the poor and to the workers. And that is why, at the time of capitalist government, when the rich ruled and the poor slaved for them, many workers were forced to live in barns and their children were often born there.
But the times have changed. We've seen many transformations.
Working class children are no longer born in barns. Even the Christ Child grew up and aged; now he has a long beard and he has become Grandfather Frost.
He does not walk around naked or in rags anymore, he is nicely dressed in a fur coat and fur hat. Even our workers and their children do not walk around naked or dressed in rags anymore.
Grandfather Frost comes to us from the East and his way is lit by many stars, not just one Star of Bethlehem. A whole line of red stars on our mines, steelworks, factories and buildings.
These red stars joyfully announce that your daddies and mommies met the targets given to them in the fourth year of Gottwalds Five Year Plan.The more bright stars Grandfather Frost sees, the happier will your holidays be as Christmas becomes a happy celebration of reaching our targets at work during the past year.
The better these work targets are reached, the more presents will Grandfather Frost bring to all of you.
At Christmas time we fulfill the pledges we made to Comrade Stalin last year.
And again to honor the holidays, let us all make another pledge to our liberator, friend and teacher, Comrade Stalin, let's pledge to our president Comrade Gottwald that all of us, those big and small will work with all our might using our work abilities and skills in schools, factories and offices so every workplace is capable off reaching and exceeding the Five Year Plan Targets.
So that the red stars continue to shine over factories, coal mines, state farms, agricultural collectives, in the towns and in the villages, so that our beautiful country will continue to bloom with the flowers of met and exceeded work quotas. This will foil the criminal plans and intent of those who instead of productive labor want to start the next world war in order to enslave our nation and profit from human labor. Let's promise that we'll defend peace and goodwill in our nation!
