Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Our First Danish Christmas

The last 3 years we have lived in Denmark, we have always traveled and spent Christmas away from home. The first year was London, the second year was Prague, and last year was Berlin. With Wesley here, it made more sense to stay here, and create our own Christmas traditions.

The Danes do things a little different than we do. For example, they celebrate on the 24th with a big dinner and opening of gifts. The meal is usually duck, brown sugared potatoes, sausages....what else did I forget? Oh the dessert is "ris a la monde" which is rice pudding with an almond in it. If you get the almond, you win or you are lucky or something like that. The Danes also drink lots of mulled spiced wine and schnapps. Another thing we find here at this time of year, is the song by Wham "Last Christmas" is played on the radio all.the.time.

This year, we have Aunt Katie coming to visit! We are going to attempt to make a Danish Christmas dinner on the 25th. We have a beautiful tree (I insisted), and will open presents the morning of the 25th after Santa comes the night before.

I try to sing Christmas hymns to Wesley to make sure we are teaching him the "reason for the season". I am pretty bad where if I cant remember the words, I just make some up. Little Drummer Boy is his favorite. : )

There is something about having a child, that makes you see things for the first time. I will always remember the way his eyes lit up when we turned the lights on the Christmas tree. Makes you realize how simple and beautiful things are.

What are some of your favorite traditions?

5 comments:

  1. I CAN'T WAIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm ready for some glogg.

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  2. That is so sweet! We also usually go to the movies on Christmas Day, so yall will have to pop in a DVD or head to town!

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  3. Amber not sausages - but roasted pork or duck and hot cherry sauce for the Ris a la mande. And yes we put in a whole almond and the one, who gets it, win some kind of gift. Traditionelly it's a marcipane pig covered with chocolate!!

    And yes Wham is played All the time! Personally i like "dó they know it's Christmas" more!!

    I love baking cookies, making homemade chocolates, dekorating the tree.


    Can't wait to see your tree! And did you say that you wanted to make a Danish dinner? Then also remember White potatoes, chips, Brown graving and such :-)


    Mette

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  4. Btw: another very typically Danish Christmas tradition, which i have enjoyed sine childhood is to watch "Disneys juleshow" (Christmas show) ón tv ón the afternoon of the 24th!! A one hour program with different little Disney Christmas stories - All the same each year except one..

    Mette

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  5. Another very Danish tradition is to go around the Christmas tree hand in hand singing carols before opening the presents. The last song is always "Nu er det jul igen" where you run in almost every room in the house!

    As Mette says, the traditional Christmas meal consists of duck, white potatoes, gravy, sugar potatoes, rødkål, chips and marmelade. But some people prefer other kind of meat: medister (which is what I guess you think of when you say sausages?) or ribbensteg.

    Glædelig jul! :)

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