Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Danish Christmas Traditions

A group of us were sitting around last night and had an interesting conversation about Danish Christmas traditions. Here are a few of things that were mentioned.

-The big day for celebrating is Christmas eve.
-Christmas day is mostly for visiting and playing with presents.
-Boxing day is known as second Christmas day and the 23rd is sometimes reffered to as little Christmas.
-One person remembered that one Christmas eve morning his mother would serve hot chocolate and æblesivers (little apple dounuts that look like Timbits) for breaakfast. Most of the others thought that much sugar for breakfast sounded terrible but the man pointed out that it was no worse than North Americans eating pancakes for breakfast.
-Turkey is not big thing here. It tends to be a certain kind of roasted pork or, if you want to get very traditional, goose.
-Desert, aside from æbleskivers, is traditionally rice pudding with an almond in it. Whoever finds the almond, gets a prize.
-Presents are opened on Christmas eve.
-Candles are lit on the Christmas tree. Yes, with real fire. My Danish family in Canada do this too.
-Santa Clause is called Julemand. I asked what he does over here and was told he delivers the gifts in person on Christmas eve. I guess there's no need for milk and cookies then.
-Apparently many people here feel that believing in Julemand is healthy for children. Teaching them about God, however, is indoctrinating them with superstition.

Monday, December 18, 2006

I just booked my ticket out of here. It feels kind of weird to think that I've been here almost a year and it feels just as weird to think I'll be leaving so soon. But I won't be going straight home to Canada. The month of February is going to be spent in Ireland doing a bit of extra Baha'i service and seeing the family again. In the mean time there are still about six weeks left to go in Denmark, including the Christmas holiday. The weather has stayed pretty warm here and we still don't have snow yet but there's been pleanty of rain and almost no sunlight. I've been told that I've been very lucky when it comes to the weather, that's it's usually much worse, but that doesn't really help.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

God Jul

Even with everybody over here trying to abandon religion Christmas is still a big deal and now that winter is here I can see why. It's dark. The days are getting very, very short and the few hours of daylight we get are usually full of thick, grey clouds. It's not that cold though so we aren't getting snow and that makes it even worse. At least when there's snow it reflects the light. We are very much in need of a cheerful hoilday at this point so people cling with all their might to those strings of Christmas lights.

There are a few differences I've noticed. One is that the decorations tend to be more old-fashioned. Lots of evergreen branches and candles. The lights are mostly white, not the mulit-coloured ones we put up. I think there are also a lot of people who tend to feel they need a little extra something to get them through the dark time because there's a special juleøl ...Christmas beer with double the alcohol.

God Jul

Even with everybody over here trying to abandon religion Christmas is still a big deal and now that winter is here I can see why. It's dark. The days are getting very, very short and the few hours of daylight we get are usually full of thick, grey clouds. It's not that cold though so we aren't getting snow and that makes it even worse. At least when there's snow it reflects the light. We are very much in need of a cheerful hoilday at this point so people cling with all their might to those strings of Christmas lights.

There are a few differences I've noticed. One is that the decorations tend to be more old-fashioned. Lots of evergreen branches and candles. The lights are mostly white, not the mulit-coloured ones we put up. I think there are also a lot of people who tend to feel they need a little extra something to get them through the dark time because there's a special juleøl ...Christmas beer with double the alcohol.