Today we are publishing the last of the stories that were drawn in our Christmas at Home competition. They were mostly cheerful and funny and full of unexpected situations that cannot even be invented, but they were written by life We also learned about Christmas customs and traditions in the families of our colleagues, we even read a story in rhymes. Today we are publishing the last one.

We don't ring the doorbell anymore

Jana Nováková

We like traditional Christmas. At home, we don't travel anywhere on vacation at this time. During the first and second Christmas holidays, we will gradually visit one grandmother and grandfather and others. It's divided.

We made only two changes, the chocolate advent calendar is given to children as early as 1.12 with boots, for a practical reason. Grandmothers fill St. Nicholas packages with sweets, among which the Advent calendar was lost. From my childhood, I remembered opening the windows on the Advent calendar and I want the children to know that Christmas is coming. The second exception is that since we have two guinea pigs, we don't buy fireworks on New Year's Eve, only sparklers. We realized how the animals are afraid of this noise, we also have to cover ours with a blanket and put them in the corridor so that they do not perceive the noise under the windows so much.

This year, we built a Christmas tree on 12.12., because it was recommended by Mrs. Katarína Nádaská . We have an artificial tree with decorations from my parents, decorations made by children, when they were smaller, we don't put chocolate collections on it. It is a tree of memories.

Over the years, I have already figured out which cakes the family likes and I don't change them anymore, we have classics, gingerbread, cut-out Linzer pastries, elephant teardrop, one-meter cake. For Christmas dinner, we have wafers with honey, garlic, berries with poppy seeds, cabbage soup and fried trout with potato salad.

I also wanted to keep the tradition that after dinner we will ring the bell, which will signal that Santa Claus has already arrived and we can move on to the presents. That's how I remembered it from my childhood. Well, my childhood memory somehow didn't work out the first time. My husband understood it by ringing the doorbell while we were already at the table (there was no dinner yet). There was panic, the children were tiny, my daughter was about 3 years old, my son was even smaller, he was sitting in a seat, he was half a year old. My daughter was scared that whoever was coming to us, she started crying, of course my son started crying too, so instead of dinner, we comforted the children. We mainly explained to our daughter that no stranger was coming to us :-), then we ate and didn't ring the bell anymore.

We returned to this tradition again a year later, but as it should be. After dinner, my husband rang the bell that was on the table and that meant the charm of going to the tree where there are gifts. Now the children perceive it positively (they are 10 and 12 years old) and are looking forward to the end of dinner and the ringing of the bell.