What do you miss about the Czech Republic/Slovakia? / Po cem se vam styska nejvice?

I miss all the holidays. Maybe because we are so close to Christmas, that would be it for me too right now. I still don’t understand why a tree should be decorated on Thanksgiving day and taken down before the end of the year. My husband and I always celebrated on 24th with traditional dinner (somehow, since he will not eat carp, but he loves my potato salad, klobasy a rizky), and opened one present. Then we would celebrate again the day after traditional US christmas. Once we had kids, we continue the tradition, though we debated quite a bit if that will screw them up. They love it.
However, it is not the same. I miss the tru spirit of Czech Christmas. I even miss the “Christmas” cleaning (you know, the windows, carpet cleaning, and of course I could not forget the crystal and china in your china cabinets. Or was it just my family?). I love this country, but boy as I get older, do I miss my old ways.

Do you still recall your fist memory of Mikulas? I have a picture, must have been about four years old and I have this puzzled look. From the corner of my eye I could see cert, but my parents were right there with me so I was kind of OK. Well, I stood in my parents shoes for the first time ever last year with my children. Now, remember, my children never heard about mikulas or cert so it was kind of shock for them to walk into a pub filled with dozens of children and their parents they have never seen before and walk up to the stage and right there was Mikulas, three angles and seven devils. You should have seen their faces. Those pictures are priceless to me. Of course it took about a whole two seconds for my two year old son to be dancing with certi and pulling on their tails. At the end he was the main attraction and did not want to leave. But boy, was he terrified in the beginning.
I miss this being a normal tradition. Americans don’t understand why we would want to scare our children so much. Don’t let me start about Velikonoce and my explaining it to my mother in law.

OMG! I am getting so homesick reading all these posts – az mam s toho bramboru v krku.
I miss mikulas too. My mum loves to tell the story of when I was 3 or 4 yrs old and my dad saw this beautiful Mikulas with cert and andel so he race down the street to get them to come and visit us. Mum said they were the best costumes she ever saw. In fact, they were so convincing I started screaming in terror, hid behind mum’s skirt and even the beautiful angel lady couldn’t make me come out. An to my embarassment my 1yr old sister just cruised through the whole spectacle.
I hear there is a mothers group in Sydney (so jealous) and they have their own Mikulas, but I don’t think there’s that many Czechs here in Melbourne. )-:

Tanjo, ja strasne rada budu prvni na seznamu kontactu v Australii. Jake informace ode me potrebujes? To by bylo uzasny kdyby se nekdo ozval. xx