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Hello and welcome to SoundCzech, Radio Prague’s Czech language course in which you can learn new phrases with the help of song lyrics. Today we are playing a Christmas carol called Veselé Vánoce – or Merry Christmas.

Czech mobile phone users made 44 million calls on Christmas Eve, according to data released by operators and quoted by the Czech News Agency. The number is a record for one day in the Czech Republic, which has a population of around 10.5 million, and was two million more than the figure registered on December 24 last year. The number of SMSes sent was, at 75.2 million, fewer than in 2013.

The recently installed mayor of Prague, Adriana Krnáčová doled out free fish soup on the city’s Old Town Square on Christmas Eve, upholding a tradition of the office. Praguers and tourists formed a long queue to receive the soup, which for many Czechs is the first course of Christmas dinner from Mayor Krnáčová, who was dressed in a chef's outfit. She was helped by other city councilors and the head of her ANO party, Finance Minister Andrej Babiš.

For today’s special Christmas Day programme Pavla Horáková has invited three young ladies from Prague to her own kitchen to discuss the tradition of Czech Christmas cookies and also to make and taste the popular kind known as “Beehives” or “Wasps’ Nests”.

One of the staples of the Czech Christmas’, along with fried carp, Christmas cookies and fairy tales, is Jakub Jan Ryba’s Christmas Mass. The mass composed by a small-town teacher in 1796 has become the most popular piece of Czech Christmas music ever written. It is performed in churches, concert halls and resounds in millions of Czech homes at this time of year. So on Christmas Eve, we would like to share this musical experience with you and have selected a 1998 recording that has been hailed as the best recording of the Czech Xmas mass ever made.

Many Czechs are preparing for an unusually long Christmas break from work. The combination of state holidays on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and a regular weekend means that a lot of people around the country will enjoy a five-day break, a situation that will not arise again until 2018. After that it will not recur until 2025. Czechs celebrate Christmas on the evening of December 24.

In Magazine: Balloon mail for Baby Jesus, the town of Sušice saves a precious mobile nativity scene, Czech bears wide-awake for their traditional Christmas brunch and, when it comes to Christmas Czechs love all things Czech.

Among the many Christmas events underway in Prague at this time of year is an exhibition of nativity scenes and bells at Bethlehem Chapel in the city centre. Hidden deep in the bowels of the chapel, the exhibition is light years away from the bright lights and bustling city life above. Everything on display is hand made –from wood carved nativity scenes to Christmas decorations made of lace – and it transports visitors to the Christmases of days-gone-by. My guide around the exhibition Hanka Drahošová says this is the place to come for the real Christmas

With Christmas just around the corner, a search is underway in many households’ attics or basements for ornaments that will – in due time – decorate the Christmas tree. In many families, trees will be adorned with the colourful glass globes, spikes, figurines and other baubles whose tradition in the Czech Republic goes back to the times of the Great Depression. In this edition of Marketplace, we follow the story of Ozdoba CZ, one of the oldest Czech producers of glass Christmas ornaments

Sales of the freshwater fish carp, which is eaten by most Czechs for Christmas dinner on the evening of December 24, are due to begin later this week.