Night Has a Different Map from Day
A text for customers and guests of the Christmas Courtyard (Vánoční dvůr) in Dobrovíz, August 2026.
A look back
The festive lighting of the Christmas Courtyard, 10 October 2013
Indian summer has coloured our courtyard and vanished behind the roofs of the neighbouring dwellings. The forecast is coming true, and so we unfold the parasol, although words seem to float in the air…
What, after all, should one wish for? I recall the words of Jan Skácel: a harp, give me a harp. We open the gate and greet the first guests. The angel on the fence gleams in place of the sun and makes us forget its missing radiance. The one from the roof descended quietly to proclaim the joyful tidings. That joyful Christmas message, although the third angel is still on its way. We have found names for the two of them – after all, we live beneath the wings of the Archangel Michael and the Archangel Zachariel.
The first notes sound of the song that has been carrying all of us lately, for we too are on the road with Tomáš Klus. On the road to the Courtyard, to Christmas and to the angel… There are landscapes of light that we know; they look in at our windows or we meet them on the way home, but night has a different map than day…
Perhaps out of some reverence, only after a long time spent musing on St Jerome and St Francis, the first chime sounds, so as not to disturb the majesty of Christmas, which is slowly descending on our courtyard. With it, though, comes rain, and we test the truth of more than one proverb. Fortunately everyone has a little piece of sky above them, and beneath the parasol firm but tiny ground, about two inches, that a neighbour has left them. Human togetherness can take even such a form. The angels flutter in the closing melody, their little feathers blending with the water, and they quietly descend to the ground, into the dark, before the shining eyes of children. Happiness is always so unexpectedly near.
Darkness has wrapped the courtyard, but the lights shone proudly into the night sky with the reason of their birth, and time returned to itself again. Night has a different map than day. It is edged with points of light, little squares, strings of lights. From the dark a door opened, and the voice of a courier forced its way inside: "Here we are, and we have brought you that angel."