"Tak!" boomed St. Mikulas, motioning with his silver staff up a dirt path, his robes flowing around him. "Jdeme tady."
"This is the worst holiday I've ever seen - all I do is make people cry," Mike said, adjusting his ogre-ish monster mask in the pale moonlight and following the saint. "Let's go scare some more kids."
It is Dec. 5, the feast of St. Mikulas in the Czech Republic, when people dress up as devils, angels and the saint himself and invade neighborhood homes, demanding to know whether the children living there have been naughty or nice. If they've been naughty, they get coal or potatoes from the devils; if nice, they get sweets from the angels. And presiding over the judgment is St. Mikulas, the Czech version of St. Nick.
We were 35 minutes outside Prague, helping the village of Kov ry celebrate the holiday with our art history professor Otto, who lives there. So, in the still of the night in a sleepy hamlet in rural Bohemia, a group of American students and Czech locals went from house to house, scaring the pants off little kids and making them recite a verse in lieu of taking them to hell. But the tense moments when the devils raid the house are always followed by the entrance of the angels and St. Mikulas, and the impromptu gathering becomes a mini-party. The parents of the house have prepared shots of vodka or Fernet Stock for the roving band of well-wishers and there is general merriment.
After passing judgment in all the houses of Kov ry, we returned to Otto's bar and library for dinner, and the village came with us. Dozens of people crammed into the old shack and partook in a big pot of beef gulas as the vinyl recording of "Louis Armstrong at Lucerna," a 1965 concert in Prague, played over the speakers. Alcohol had been accumulating in the collective bloodstream for some time now, and the merriment was steadily reaching fever pitch.
With a full plate of real gulas in front of me, a Pilsner by its side, a fleet of neighborhood children running around, my friends and classmates mingling with the old Czech locals and Satchmo singing "Mack the Knife," I realized this was happiness. Outside of the book-lined walls there was darkness and coldness for miles, yet here were the townspeople of Kov ry celebrating life in the warmth of companionship. Here everything was simple and friendly, a wonderful mix of culture and language, the climax of a semester abroad.
At one point Pavel, a large old Czech man I hadn't yet met, put me in a headlock, leaned his cheek against mine and said, "M*j kamarad!" I twisted the headlock into a hug and told him, "Ano, j jsem v s kamarad." Yes, I'm your friend." And I wasn't just acquiescing because he was big.
Toward the end of the night, Otto sat down next to me and we surveyed the scene together.
"It's like the AC/DC song," he said in his Czech accent, which remained eloquent even after some drinking.
I gave him a quizzical look.
"It's always bad to be on a highway to hell," he clarified. He pointed to the old, the young and the in-between, all smiling and together, some dressed as devils, some as angels, leaning on each other, dancing, playing patty-cake. "This is the highway to paradise."
I couldn't control my smile. He was right. And it's been a great ride.
Music up with a swell. Cut to a long shot of the exterior of the library, windows ablaze with light and transmitting the muffled sound of joy. Crane up, revealing the surrounding darkness, the faint definition of the rolling Bohemian hills that stretch out toward the continent's corners.
Fade out.
