In Slovakia, Christmas celebrations begin in Advent and continue through December 6th when they celebrate Saint Nicholas. Traditional Christmas foods include cabbage, mushroom soup, gingerbread, and Christmas wafers eaten with honey and garlic. Families partake in traditions like cutting apples to predict health and throwing nuts in the corners for food throughout the next year. They exchange presents to show dependence on each other and sing carols to enhance the Christmas effect. Churches display nativity scenes called Betlehems that are often constructed from wood.

2. In Slovakia, Christmas
celebrations begin with Advent
Merry Christmas is “Veselé
Vianoce“ in Slovak language
We also celebrate „Saint
Nicholas“ (Mikuláš) on the 6th of
December.

5. A lot of people eat christmas cabbage, but there are
also families who eat mushroom soup on Christmas

6. Gingerbread
It‘s usual to bake gingerbread every Christmas.
Gingerbread is a kind of a sweet pie or a cookie.
It‘s made of flour, honey, sugar, eggs. You can
also add nuts or cinnamon for better taste.
Each gingerbread gets decorated.

7. Christmas Wafers
On every Christmas dinner, we eat Christmas
wafers with honey and a tiny piece of garlic.
It‘s a tradition in every family.

8. Traditions
• After the dinner, we cut an apple in half
and if the core is pretty (Looking like a
star), that means you are going to be
healthy the whole year.
• A candle is lit up, it‘s a symbol of
Christmas
• We throw nuts into corners so we will
have food for the whole next year.

9. Every Christmas, we give our friends and family
presents.
It‘s because we need to show them that we
depend on them and also, we thank them this
way for the whole year.
Nobody should be alone on Christmas.

10. We also sing christmas carols, to make the effect
of Christmas even more effecting!
The most popular ones are Tichá noc (Silent
night) and Poďme bratia do Betlema (Come
my brothers to Betlehem).

11. Betlehem
People are used to prepare
Betlehems in the churches.
They are often made from wood.

12. Mirka Gyetvenová, VIII.A