St. Mikulas Day and Christmas in Prague

One of the more interesting things they do here in Czech Republic (and other countries) is the celebration of St. Nicholas Day. Here in CZ the name is Mikulas, hence the blog title.

Nicholas greets tourists. 

St. Nicholas goes around with an angel and a devil escorting him. They find little children in the small towns and the kids have to sing Christmas songs. If they sing the carols, they get candy from the angel. If they don't, well that is what the devil is for.

As I was downtown walking around this day, there were many people downtown participating in this and enjoying the Christmas markets. Several people went all out and had incredibly detailed and even frightening costumes. Prague has been a hot spot in the film industry for making movies, so occasionally Barrandov Studios will send out some people in costume. 

Creepy Krampus takes the time to pose with a fan.

Several of my coworkers were not fans of the monstrous representations. The traditional devil is more of a cutesie little baby imp type creature. Popular movies such as Krampus have influenced the representation I believe. Plus, Krampus himself is very popular in Germany, just one country away.



Everything about Christmas downtown is beautiful. All the streets are beautifully decorated and there is truly a magical feeling about walking around down there. Pair that will the amazing architechture and you get a wonderful experience. It's almost hard to believe that the percentage of atheists is so high here.

Our prayer for Prague is that they would see the real meaning of the season. Please join us in praying that for them. 

Old Town Square Christmas Markets

We are going to be taking the next couple of weeks off. We wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! 

When It Rains, It Pours (Through the Ceiling)

Someone once said, "The accumulation of little things is no little thing." I can tell you for certain that this is true. The past month has been hard. There have been a lot of little things that have gone wrong. I know that we are not supposed to make a mountain out of a mole hill, but what if all the moles got together and made one giant mole hill? What if there was a Mole King, and he lorded his Moleness with ruthless indifference? You get the idea.

We decided before we left for Europe this time that if we wrote a blog we would post the good and the bad. Well that has been hard to stick with, as it is often difficult to share our struggles, especially in an age when most people are only showing the highlights of ther lives on social media.

About a week or so ago, the ceiling in our kitchen decided that it would leak. I was in the other room and I thought I heard rain outside. Tonya was not home at the time and I remember hoping that she had taken her umbrella with her. The rain intensified, so I decied to get up and look out the window at the storm. That's when I stepped in the small lake that had formed on the kitchen floor. I looked up at the ceiling and the water was pouring as if there was an artifical rain machine installed. What happened next could have been an episode of "I Love Lucy" or some other ridiculous sitcom. I emptied the trash can and as many pots and pans as I could find to catch the leaking water. Thankfully, it finally stopped. I also frantically messaged a colleague who helped me devise a plan to communicate with the neighbor upstairs. Thanks Alena.

My next task was to contact the school administrator to see what could be done about it. He told me to talk to the man upstairs (not God, although I also did that) to see what the leak was. I walked upstairs and realized my dilemma. I spoke no Czech. He spoke no English. This was going to be wonderful. Through Google translate and the use of my exceptionally limited Czech vocabulary, we established that he had no idea what I was talking about. Fortunately, my administrator came and talked with him later. The only problem is that he said nothing was leaking in his apartment, so nothing got resolved. The leak stopped though, so that was at least something.

The next couple of areas of frustration come from our ministry attempts here. I really should not speak publicly about those, but please be in prayer for us. Things simply are not working out in the way we anticipated they would.

Next, we have basketball. The begining of November brings the beginning of basketball season. As I have written about previously, not getting to be around basketball is like missing a member of our family, so for that to be up and running again makes us very homesick. They're in good hands though, so that brings us quite a bit of comfort. Thanks Greenie.

Speaking of homesick, last week was Thanksgiving! Or, as they call it here in the Czech Republic, Thursday. It is not an observed holiday here (why would it be?) so that left us feeling all the more lonely still. Thankfully Tonya, being the Wonder of a Woman that she is, (see what I did there?) was able to locate some pumpkin pie mix at an American speciality shop here in the city. She also found most of the ingredients for a pretty nice Thanksgiving meal, so that turned out to be pretty nice.


I am glad November is over. There were so many small things that went wrong this month, so many mole hills trying to become mountains. Nothing this month was very consistent. That is why I am glad we have our faith. That is the only constant in this constantly changing life we're building here. Thank God for that.


NEXT WEEK: We'll have a look at the Christmas markets here in Prague and the St. Mikulas (St. Nicholas).