December '14

The Supreme Sock Council was solving the biggest dilemma so far when deciding on the December sock pattern: should the sock from Ponožkovice match the Christmas atmosphere and become a part of the festive scenery full of ubiquitous flashing Christmas lights and reindeers wearing their jingle bells, or should the sock refresh the club members’ spirit by drawing their attention in other direction? Since this issue proved to be very complex, it was decided for the Council to undertake a two-month meditative journey through the Tibetan plateau (in the provinces of Changdu Shi and Linzhi Diqu where thinkers, such as Longchenpa, Richard Gere and Yeshe Tsogyal also practised their meditations) in order to find an answer to such a complicated question. This meditative journey really took place, but for practical reasons, not in Tibet, but in the woods between Bečov and Horní Slavkov. For similar reasons, the duration of the spiritual journey was shortened to one afternoon. Only tea and cucumber salad was served for lunch in order to maximally maintain the principle of fasting. Our discussion was finally ended by a simple argument – December without Christmas would be quite a depressing month. It is cold, dark and damp (here comes a note from the official record: a member of the Council also added the feeling of hunger to the list of unpleasantness, since he is not a fan of cucumbers). Colourful and vibrant Christmas typical for this period of the year is therefore a clearly positive phenomenon that we should appreciate: being surrounded by close people in a dry and warm room with plenty of food is all we can wish for.