The Golden Pig

I was teaching a class the other day that mostly revolved around advertising. I asked the student to describe for me her favorite tv commercial. She thought a bout it for a while and was describing it. Basically it's a scene of a father and daughter in the woods talking. They are having a nice little chat when the conversation rolls around to the christmas golden pig...
"Excuse me?" I interrupted, being a terrible mistake for a teacher when the student is producing well, but I thought there might be a translation error.
"The Christmas golden pig," she repeated.
"Pig? Like oink oink pig?"
"Yes"
"It's golden?" She gave me a couple of czech words which basically mean gold covered or gilded, which verified that I had not misheard, and that she had not mistranslated.
"What does this have to do with Christmas?" I asked a little befuddled. I mean I understand that all cultures celebrate holidays differently and I have already come to terms with the fact that the presents at christmas here are delivered by a flying baby jesus, but golden pigs?? Come on! I thought she was pulling my leg. However it turns out that children here are taught to fast all day for Christmas until the evening meal. If they manage not to eat at all they are promised to see the golden pig. Apparently if you see the golden pig then you are supposed to get a wish or something to that effect.
I had basically forgotten whatever it was I was supposed to be teaching, and kept mumbling things about gloden pigs for Christmas.
For the next week I went around asking everyone if they knew that there was a Golden Christmas Pig. I keep imagining gilded pigs running around the Czech countryside hiding from naughty little children who eat on Christmas.