Tradition of Christmas tree collections for children’s homes dates back over 80 years

Photo: CTK

On Sunday, which was the first Sunday of Advent, the lights were switched on on Christmas trees on main squares around the Czech Republic. But there is more to the brightly decorated evergreens than creating a seasonal spirit: in many cities and towns charity collections are held at the trees, with visitors donating cash and gifts to Czech children’s homes. It is a tradition that dates back more than eight decades.

Photo: CTK
While many visitors will be admiring the 20-metre pine currently towering over Prague’s Old Town Square, it was in the Czech Republic’s second city Brno that the tradition of Christmas tree collections began in this part of the world.

The man who started the custom was a Brno-based writer named Rudolf Těsnohlídek, whose serialised novel Vixen Sharp Ears provided the basis for Janáček’s opera The Cunning Little Vixen.

On December 22, 1919, Těsnohlídek and two friends had gone to the woods at Bílovice nad Svitavou, a few kilometres from Brno, in order to cut down a Christmas tree. But instead they found an abandoned an infant.

Bílovice elementary school teacher Pavel Kovač told the story to Czech Television.

“They heard a wail, which they thought was some dying animal, like a deer. But when they got closer they discovered, to their horror, that it was a 17-month-old child, half naked on a quilt and almost frozen. They later learned that her name was Liduška Kosourová; she had been left there by her distressed mother.”

The mother, who had had the baby with a Russian World War I prisoner, got five years in jail for leaving her to die in the woods. As for the child, she was adopted by another couple, and later died in Prague at the ripe old age of 79.

Rudolf Těsnohlídek was profoundly affected by the chance saving of the girl’s life, and was spurred into action.

“That was a year after the foundation of Czechoslovakia. Těsnohlídek started to think deeply about the fates of abandoned children, who weren’t being looked after. The legislation was being created, but such care wasn’t yet enshrined in law, and it hadn’t been thought out. As a journalist for Lidové noviny, Těsnohlídek started urging the public to ensure such children weren’t neglected, and for the matter to be dealt with thoroughly.”

The writer was inspired by a custom in Denmark, whereby collections for the needy were held every year at a Christmas tree in Copenhagen. However, it took him five years to find support for the establishment of similar collections with the aim of building a children’s home in the Moravian capital. Teacher Pavel Kovač again.

“It was necessary to win over the authorities, societies that were founded at that time, and business people, to the idea of building a home that would serve to stand in for parental upbringing.”

Eventually Rudolf Těsnohlídek did find backing for the project, and the money started building up. Though he did not live to see its completion, the original institution he envisaged – which is named Dagmar – is still running to this day in Brno. And all of the Czech Republic’s Christmas tree collections for children’s homes can be traced back to his laudable efforts over 80 years ago.