Merry Christmas With a Carp

Posted by Amanda Kendle Dec 25, 2006

When I lived in Bratislava, Slovakia, I worked as an English teacher. After the Christmas holidays one year, I played a fun game to warm-up my students's English after a two-week break. All twelve of us stood in a circle and in turn told one thing we'd done over the Christmas break; each person would then have to repeat the entire list correctly, as well as adding their own experience, to be able to stay in the game.

Now, I did already know that Slovaks like to eat carp fish for their Christmas Eve dinner, and that a fresh carp was best: numerous people had already explained that the carp would swim in their bathtub for the couple of days before the feast. But how the carp went from the bathtub to the dinner table was something I hadn't wanted to think about.

A couple of minues into our warm-up game it was Martin's turn. His Christmas break activity? - "I killed a carp with a hammer". For the next fifteen minutes I heard endless repetitions of "Martin killed a carp with a hammer" until finally our game came to an end. I winced each time but finally came to accept that the poor carp had just fulfilled its Christmas destiny. And I'll never forget Martin, either!

Merry Christmas to all our readers!