Letter from Prague | All stories

Before I started here at Radio Prague I worked as a translator at CTK, the Czech Republic's only news agency and I still do translations to make a bit of extra cash. I find myself doing the most bizarre translations, often in areas of which I know next to nothing, such as ceramics, the construction industry and, for my sins, Lord of the Rings mobile phone games.

Well, the Xmas holidays are well and truly over and in many households they've left behind a funny smell. No I don't mean the smell of incense or vanilla. This year the Xmas hit was something called "stink blasters. Like hundreds of thousands of Czech adults I set about fulfilling this peculiar Xmas wish, without giving it anymore thought than I had given to the eyeball in goo the year before. Kids are kids - and what harm can a stink blaster do?

Christmas is over and the end of the year is quickly approaching. This is a time to recap, to reflect on the past year, to try to anticipate what the coming year will bring and to make New Year's resolutions.

Christmas is just days away, and it would be obtuse of me if I wrote this Letter from Prague about anything else. To be honest I find Christmas has little to recommend it: as an atheist it has no religious significance, I'm too old to get excited about unwrapping presents - a major downside of adulthood, and I don't have kids so I can't enjoy their fun either. So usually I find the holiday usually passes in a blur of mild indigestion and mind-numbing vegetation in front of the TV. This year, I expect, will be no exception.

It would not have occurred to me that something like that could happen - but I did not like the thing anyway. I'm talking about a Christmas tree, the tallest in this country, nicknamed Big Charles, that stood in Prague's Old Town Square until last Saturday when it came crashing down and nearly killed several people.

In recent years the Czech media has grown increasingly obsessed with one issue this time of year, which is whether traditional Czech Christmas figures - like Mikulas, the Czech version of Saint Nicholas, have taken a beating from western imports like Santa Claus and Rudolph-the-red-nose reindeer. To a certain extent the fears are justified. For time immemorial Czech children have looked with anticipation towards the eve of December the 6th - St Nicholas' Day - but recent years have seen mutations drawing the holiday closer to a masquerade ball

If you have been to Prague then you will be familiar with the magistrala, the motorway which cuts through the top of Wenceslas Square, just in front of the National Museum. I was shocked a couple of years ago to discover that the road - which carries heavy traffic right through the centre of the capital - had been built in the 1970s.

About a month ago, a number of public opinion polls suggested that the Communists enjoyed second place on the popularity ladder in the Czech Republic. When the results of the first poll were released, they were not given much importance but confirmation from a second poll conducted by a different agency, resulted in heated discussion and public debate. The country's politicians, sociologists and independent commentators were asked to analyse the situation, trying to find a logical reason why ever more Czechs would want to support a party that was

Czechs are in the throes of a shopping fever. Fourteen years of a Western lifestyle have not sated people's urge to buy and buy some more. Few people need an excuse but if you do there is always some reason - the Christmas shopping season now starts in October - then come the New Year sales and then Easter is just around the corner.

My Letter from Prague today is going to be about Christmas or rather the ever earlier occurrence of signs indicating that the great holiday is coming. If you expect now a traditionalist bashing of consumerism... you are partly right.