Danish Christmas

For the Danes, the 24th is "Christmas" (called "Juleaften") and then the 25th and 26th are "First Christmas Day" and "Second Christmas Day," respectively. So in Denmark, there are technically 3 Christmas days. And actually, the whole month of December is pretty much considered as Christmas. All month long people keep advent calendars and burn advent candles, and the kids get advent presents which means a very small present every day until the 24th (hair ribbons, pens, etc), or a slightly larger present every Sunday. When we get kids we're going to have to figure out if we will do that or stockings or somehow combine the two, so they don't get spoiled rotten out of the two traditions.

On the 24th, the family gathers for a big Christmas dinner with certain foods. We went to Morten's sister's house. The traditional Christmas feast consists of roast duck, pork roast, both regular potatoes and smaller potatoes with a brown sugar coating, brown gravy, and red cabbage. Then comes the ris'a'la'mande (rice pudding) with cherries on top, and somebody has to find the almond in it. Alex found it, and for a prize he got a gift certificate to the movies.

After dinner we dance around the three. I felt pretty foolish, especially because while dancing around the tree, we had to sing a lot of Danish Christmas songs that I don't know. They sang "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" in English in my honor though, which I was grateful for. It is fun to see all the big grown up men do something like dancing around a Christmas tree and singing cute little songs, but they took it quite seriously and didn't seem to think it was strange at all. That's one of the things I appreciate about Danish men, the whole macho attitude is just nonexistent. Anyway...

After dancing around the tree we all got settled for a REALLY long display of present opening. The tradition, at least in Morten's family, is that we open only one present at a time so everyone can see what it is, then the person who opened last picks a new present for someone else. We were 11 people and there were lots of presents for all, so it took about 2 hours to open them all. My favorites were from Morten: he gave me 2 dvds, Mamma Mia and Sense and Sensibility, and then best of all, he took my Phantom of the Opera dvd case and wrapped it with tickets to see the show next month inside. Yay!!! I have never been to the show so I am really excited to go. I also thought it was very nice that in addition to some other stuff, Morten's mom made a skirt for me :) Very personal and cute. Morten was also very happy with his presents.

Usually danish families will have a Christmas lunch on the 25th, with a several course meal of different dishes, all to be eaten with the traditional rye bread (rugbrød). In Morten's family they also do a game with white elephant gifts on that day. We didn't do it yesterday though because tomorrow there will be a really big birthday party for the Grandpa, and they didn't want to overwhelm everyone with too many parties. So on the 25th we just had a quiet day, ate pizza, and went to see Australia.

It was a very good Christmas, though very different. I think it's probably good that Christmas here is different than at home, because it doesn't make me homesick that way, it's just fun to see how they do it and enjoy the "coziness."