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  What it means

  “When on Saint Barbara’s Day a goose walks on the pond, at Christmas it is fitting to swim in it.” If the pond is not frozen on December 4, Christmas will be so warm that one could swim in it — a humorous way of saying Christmas will be mild and rainy.

  Vocabulary

  • święta Barbara — Saint Barbara (feast day: December 4)
  • gęś — goose
  • staw — pond
  • Boże Narodzenie — Christmas
  • pływać — to swim
  • godzić się — to be fitting, to be appropriate

  Grammar note

  'Po stawie chodzi' — 'po stawie' is the locative of 'staw'. 'Pływać po nim się godzi' — 'się godzi' is an impersonal construction meaning 'it is fitting/appropriate'.

  Cultural context

  A humorous variant of the Saint Barbara weather proverb, using the image of swimming in a pond at Christmas to emphasize how unseasonably warm the holiday would be.

  Intermediate

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