It was Christmas-time in the Czech Republic and rather than a chicken in every pot, there was a carp in every bathtub.

Czechs eat carp for Christmas. Not turkey. Not ham. Not yams nor gingerbread nor mince pies nor even - God forbid - fruitcake. Instead, they eat carp: black, bloated carp hand-picked from wooden vats that line the streets of Prague each December. The Czechs huddle around the vats, breath rising in the winter air, peering into the dark water to choose a slick, fat Christmas dinner. Beside each vat stands a fishmonger, his net attached to the end of a long pole, ready to snare an entrée. For the fish, there are only two ways out of the vat: alive in a water-filled bag, to enjoy their final days cruising in the family bathtub if it’s still early in the month, or DOA if dinner is imminent.

The Christmas season of 1993 was bitter cold, following a November in which much of Europe registered its lowest temperatures in nearly half a century. That December I and my friend Peter, a charming British chef with a genetically improbable resemblance to Albert Einstein and Richard Gere, walked the city streets watching the carp killing spectacles. “Wacky Czechs,” we would declare and then move along. Neither of us knew that by December’s end we would be just like them.

We intended to prepare a sumptuous Christmas feast, of course. But, as in war, poor planning, lack of supply, irreversible strategic blunders, and plain bad luck conspired to seal our fate, which gnawed its way into our hollow stomachs and left us shivering and deserted in a snow-blanketed city of shuttered shops and restaurants. And so that Christmas Eve we shuffled toward the Old Town Square, frozen hands jammed in our pockets, our souls somewhere south of our empty bellies.

Then, on the edge of the square, we stopped. Ahead the great old square lay open before us, a light blanket of glistening snow stretched thin over cobblestones finally free from summer crowds. Bright lamps shone from the high rooftops surrounding the square, their light filtering hazily through falling flakes, casting an effulgent glow that hung above the square like a canopy. Delicate traces of snow dusted the fans and swirls of the masonry and cornices, clothing the buildings in silken lacework, softening the hard stone. Our breath rose silently, tiny twin columns in the luminous night. All around us was the silence of a city at peace settling in for the night.

“It’s beautiful here at night, in the winter,” I said. Peter nodded. We forgot our hunger and our fruitless search for food. We forgot time and the cold and simply soaked in the beauty of the snow-filled night.

Suddenly Peter pointed to the farthest reaches of the square opposite us. “Look!” he shouted, fits of foggy breath bursting from his lungs. “Dinner!”

There, just across the square, alone in the still night, sat one last vat of carp. Carp! Oh happy, glorious, life-giving carp!

We dashed across the square on numb feet and when we reached the vat I pointed at the water and said breathlessly to the vendor, “Jeden, prosim”. One, please. Then, with my hands spread about three feet apart, I added “Velky”. Big.

The fishmonger plunged his net in the water and snared a huge carp. He suspended the giant fish above the water. “Dobry?” he asked. “Ano, dobry,” I answered. The fish was good.

He took the fish from the net. “Mam ho zabit?” Not understanding, I shrugged my shoulders. “Töten?” he asked in German. I looked to Peter. Peter raised an eyebrow and shrugged. Casting his eyes toward the water, the vendor thought for a moment. Then his eyes brightened. “Kill?” he said gleefully. “Yes!” we shouted. “Kill! Kill!” And then again, in Czech and English, “Ano! Ano! Kill!

The fish made a rubbery sound as the vendor whacked its head on the cutting table. He slipped it into a white plastic bag, which I took. I asked him how much we owed. The vendor replied with a number beyond my limited Czech, which led to more shrugging. He repeated himself in German. When that failed, he waved me over to his cutting table. There, in the blood and gore covering the table, in the midst of the carnage where so many carp had met their grisly end, the vendor wrote the number “75” with his fingertip

Peter and I marched through the snow to my flat carrying the fish, which we scaled, cleaned, and baked. Finally, over a bottle of wretched Frankovka wine, with snow drifting down outside our window, we ate our Czech Christmas carp - just like the one million other souls living in that elegant stone city.