Most of you probably know the 1st of May as a Labour day. In the Czech republic we do celebrate the 1st of May as love day. Lovers are supposed to gather under a blossom tree (cherry tree or a birch) and kiss. If a girl is not kissed, it is said that she will wither and die in twelve months! But if she is, then she will be beautiful all year round.
There was a very famous Czech poet, called poet of love, Karel Hynek Mácha. He wrote a poem called “Máj” (Eng. May). The poem is a tribute to the beauty of spring and narrates tragic love story of a bandit Vilém and Jarmila, the girl he loves. There is also another tradition involving single men connected to this topic. The night before May 1st, so today, single men go to the woods to cut a tree. They remove the branch and decore the trunk with different things such as scarves, ribbons, and flowers. Then the maypole is erected in the village square and guard it during the night because men from the surrounding villages intend to steal it. If the maypole is not stolen, single men are allowed to go to single women’s houses and give them little presents. On the evening, they all celebrate May at the ball.
Here you can read the beginning of the famous poem translated in English (we had to learn the poem by heart as pupils at school): Late evening, on the first of May— The twilit May—the time of love. Meltingly called the turtle-dove, Where rich and sweet pinewoods lay. Whispered of love the mosses frail, The flowering tree as sweetly lied, The rose’s fragrant sigh replied To love-songs of the nightingale.
The Czech Republic celebrates May 8th as a Liberation Day – a public holiday to commemorate May 8th 1945. On this day, Czechoslovakia, which until that date, was under German occupation, was liberated by American and Russian army units. This ended the worst and most destructive war in modern European history.
On May 8, with Allied troops approaching from west and east, the Czechs negotiated a cease-fire with the Germans. The situation was now critical; the Czechs lacked the machinery and the weaponry to continue fighting the Germans, and the city’s Old Town was in flames. Part of the cease-fire was a guarantee, from the Germans, that the city would be harmed further. The Czechs knew that, with help on the way, the cease-fire would be far more beneficial to them than it seemed on the surface. On May 9, 1945, the Red Army entered Prague. The city had been saved; its currently UNESCO – protected monuments were, for the most part, intact. And the war was, now, finally over. Read the whole article here. Stores, which are bigger than 200 square meters, are closed during this public holidays.