Christmas is here – and it still tastes like a Czech childhood 🎄

In Czech homes, the Christmas tree was never only something to look at. It was something to eat. Somewhere between the glass baubles hung chocolate figures, wrapped salonky and gingerbread on thin red ribbons – and every child in the room knew exactly which branch held what.

Every child also knew the trick. You take the figure down carefully, eat the chocolate, and hang the empty foil back exactly where it was. From the doorway the tree still looks full. Mothers always knew. They simply waited until Christmas Eve to mention it.

The figures were always the easiest target – hollow, light, almost weightless once you had done your work. The creamy ones with lemon and caramel filling belonged to the children. The truffle ones quietly disappeared when the adults thought nobody was looking. 

Sweets that rustled when someone walked past

Then the salonky. Their wrappers were twisted at both ends so they could be hooked over a branch, and when someone crossed the room too quickly, the whole tree whispered. Czech families have argued for generations about which flavour has the right to hang there – banana in chocolate, Margot, or Koko. Nobody has ever won that argument, and nobody wants to. 

The pictures that smell of snow

And then there is Josef Lada. His round-cheeked children, the sledges, the crooked little church under a hill of snow – for Czechs, that drawing is not an illustration of Christmas. It is Christmas. Generations grew up with his winter villages on calendars, on postcards and on sweet wrappers, and the moment you see them, something inside you quietly says December.

Which is why the chocolate tongues wrapped in Lada's winter scenes usually end up in a parcel for the pictures first and the chocolate second.

Then the small things that nobody abroad has heard of and everybody from Czechia misses: oblatky, those paper-thin round wafers, barely sweet, impossible to eat without the whole kitchen hearing it. Or Arabesky, the fruit jellies that lived in somebody's grandfather's cupboard all year and came out only in winter. 

And this week, they came back

The first Christmas deliveries of the year have reached us. The shelf is still modest – first deliveries always are – but the familiar faces are already on it, and we will keep adding to our 🎄 Christmas collection through the autumn. These editions are made once a year, so each one stays only while stock lasts.

One practical note, if you are reading this far from home: October is the calm month. In December the post gets crowded and parcels begin to travel at their own pace – and a Mikuláš package that arrives on the 7th is not a Mikuláš package any more. Sending the box early is simply kinder to everyone, including the person waiting for it.

Enjoy Christmas with the nostalgic tastes that bring a little Czechia to your table.