Many reasons to celebrate

WHEN my wife and I crossed Wenceslas Square in the beautiful city of Prague on St Stephen’s Day, there was no snow on the ground, crisp, even or otherwise.

A light rain was falling and the air was as temperate as it was in West Cork when we arrived home at midnight. Our trip had begun at ten o’clock that morning in Budejovice in Bohemia, a three-hour rail journey to the south.

Wenceslas, a 10th century king of Bohemia later to be canonised, was the paragon of a righteous king, an example to the monarchy of Europe. The carol relates how, upon hearing of a peasant who was without sustenance or comfort at Christmas, he set off to bring him food, wine and fuel for his fire. So harsh was the journey that his servant got lost in a blizzard, but found the king’s footsteps and thus could follow him. Wenceslas’s journey was enshrined in the annals of Christian charity. In the 15th. century, a pope, Pius II, emulated it, walking ten miles barefoot in the snow to bring alms to the poor.

My wife and I had gone to the Czech Republic not only to celebrate Christmas with one of our sons but to see our newborn grandson, to ‘check him out’ as my uncle, still very witty at the age of 90, pointed out.

The little boy was born at home, in a birthing pool of tepid water (when it sprung a leak my son, his father, had to use his finger to stem the flow) and was immediately swaddled in his mother’s arms. He slept at her breast that night — as he has every night since — his parents believing that the too-hasty removal of an infant to a cradle, abruptly isolating it from the human warmth and security it felt in the womb, may be traumatic for a child.

These days, home-birthing is often the favoured option of young people. My generation was, of course, invariably born at home. While home delivery carries risks, the parents argue that, in this case, the child did not contract jaundice, as do many babies, nor was it exposed to the danger of hospital bugs. Carried in a sling at the mother’s breast, he is a remarkably placid and contented infant, and never once interrupted our Christmas cheer.

It is, we know, part of the Christmas story that Mary laid the infant Jesus in a manger, but such details may owe more to theatre than to reality, just as Mary is rarely depicted with a swollen stomach and never with swollen ankles. To subscribe to the popular account, we must, perhaps, engage the willing suspension of disbelief.

In Bohemia, Christmas is celebrated on Dec 24 and we ate the traditional dinner of carp and potato salad at the in-laws. The carp, reared in a gravel-bottomed lake, was excellent and did not taste in the least muddy; meanwhile, the home-baked cakes and biscuits were superb. Next day, my wife made an Irish Christmas dinner in my son’s flat. The turkey, raised on a family farm, was tender and succulent, and the pudding and cake, carried from Ireland, were at their traditional best.

One afternoon, before the thaw, we drove to the country, down unpaved tracks, through pines and birch trees. Deer scattered across the snowy fields at our approach. Over the ice-bound lakes, a profound stillness reigned, a grey, frozen world, silent in the iron grip of winter. Later, the sun came out and in the glorious, yellow light, we saw bees buzzing around hives. Later, walking back by the same path as the sun lowered and the air grew chill, we saw that they had returned indoors, perhaps to go back to sleep.

As a Christmas gift, our son bought us tickets to a Mozart concert in Vienna, three hours away by train. It was a magnificent occasion; we had never experienced the swell and ebb of a one hundred-piece symphony orchestra in the grandeur of a famous concert hall before. Afterwards, we walked down to the Danube. On a pool off the main flow, mallard stood on the ice, dark outlines against the light reflected from the bridge above.