Christmas in Denmark is full of veery traditional traditions, many of which are very different from an American Christmas, so I just thought I'd post something about all the differences!
-Advent is a really big deal here, so Christmas is a month long holiday. Danes have advent candles for every day and every Sunday, advent gifts, advent calendars and advent lottery calendars.
-They don't decorate their tree until right before Christmas, and when they do, Danes hang their flag all over it and light REAL CANDLES on it. The candles are only lit for a little while, but still just oh gosh living on the edge.
-Christmas food here is SO GOOD. On Christmas eve they eat flæskesteg, roast pork but so much better. It has the fat still on it, and that's cooked or roasted or something and salted so that it becomes this crunchy amazing delicious yummyness, and it's heartbreaking because you can't get that cut in the US because our pigs are too fat, so I'll have to leave flæskesteg here when I go home. And then they eat potatoes and caramelized potatoes, and grated cabbage and brun sovs, this delicious brown sauce. And then for desert they have ris alamande, rice pudding with almonds, and there's always a full almond hidden in the pudding, and whoever finds it wins a gift.
-For julefrokosts (Christmas lunches), they eat all these assorted things on pieces of rye (or white) bread. Curried herring, shrimp salad and eggs, this meat thing (possibly liverpaste?) with bacon, remoulade, and much, much more. There's also usually schnapps involved (one thing I won't particularly miss) and also of course more ris alamande.
-Also just for normal Christmas coziness Danes have æbelskiver, these round pancake things that you eat with jam and powdered sugar. They actually sell them at Trader Joe's so everyone go try some! And also they drink gløgg which is warm wine and cinnamon and raisins and all this stuff, I'm not really a fan of wine, which was good because we had non alcoholic gløgg which just tasted very cinnamoney and cozy so I actually liked it a lot. They also have a special Christmas beer, which is very sweet, it tastes more like root beer than real beer.
-And along the lines of alcohol, again it's just so different from the US. For our lunch on Christmas, there was beer and schnapps all over the table, free for the children to drink, too.
-Danes open their presents on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day.
-They dance around the Christmas tree before opening the presents, which is just a very old tradition and it was SO CUTE.
-Danes hang hearts as decorations everywhere.
-They watch Julekalendar, there's several different ones, that all air every day leading up to Christmas. My favorite (and I think most people's favorite) is Jul i Valhal, a show about two kids that go off to this secret world and are friends with the Nordic Gods.
-They only go to church (generally) on Christmas. I know a lot of Americans do this too, but most Americans that only go on Christmas usually go on Easter too, but from what I've heard I don't think many Danes go to church on Easter even. Religion seems like it's more of a cultural, rather than spiritual, thing in Denmark.
Well I think all my blogging about my Danish Christmas is finally done. I hope you all had an amazing Christmas back home and have a happy New Year.
Alicia
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Jul i Danmark
Oh my gosh I have so much I want to blog about. I'm hitting the 5 month mark, and nearly halfway done with my exchange soon, and there's just been a lot of deep reflecting on how far I've come lately. SO MAYBE after I get through all my Christmas blogging (because oh my goodness Christmas is HUGE here) I'll post some deep exchange student posts too.
Okay well where to begin. Well like I said in my last blog post, Christmas is an entire month long celebration. So for the past 27 days I've been opening advent gifts and eating advent chocolate and scratching advent lottery calendars (I was one Christmas tree away from 1,000,000 kroner, ONE!) to get excited for Christmas.
And then last Thursday all the big Christmas stuff finally started. I had a julefrokost (Christmas lunch) with my old class, which was so nice. We ate a ton of traditional Danish food, and they got drunk under parental supervision (something I'm still getting used to) and we watched julekalendar, more specifically Jule i Valhal (a show that's played every day leading up to Christmas about 2 children that go off to this other world and are friends with the Nordic Gods) and ate ris alamande (rice pudding, ONE OF MY FAVORITE THINGS ABOUT DENMARK, and there's chopped almonds in it, and the one that finds the whole almond gets a mantle gift). There were 2 mantle gifts, Rudolph antlers and a nose, and penis glasses. Yes penis glasses ohh Danish humor. Then we headed off to the school to have a school fest, and it was all very fun and hyggeligt.
Okay well where to begin. Well like I said in my last blog post, Christmas is an entire month long celebration. So for the past 27 days I've been opening advent gifts and eating advent chocolate and scratching advent lottery calendars (I was one Christmas tree away from 1,000,000 kroner, ONE!) to get excited for Christmas.
And then last Thursday all the big Christmas stuff finally started. I had a julefrokost (Christmas lunch) with my old class, which was so nice. We ate a ton of traditional Danish food, and they got drunk under parental supervision (something I'm still getting used to) and we watched julekalendar, more specifically Jule i Valhal (a show that's played every day leading up to Christmas about 2 children that go off to this other world and are friends with the Nordic Gods) and ate ris alamande (rice pudding, ONE OF MY FAVORITE THINGS ABOUT DENMARK, and there's chopped almonds in it, and the one that finds the whole almond gets a mantle gift). There were 2 mantle gifts, Rudolph antlers and a nose, and penis glasses. Yes penis glasses ohh Danish humor. Then we headed off to the school to have a school fest, and it was all very fun and hyggeligt.
Me and Maja
Can't get over their humor
Me, Sofie, and Trine
Then on Sunday my host family and I cleaned the entire house and made candy in preparation for having Christmas Eve AND Christmas Day at our house. It also snowed, but unfortunately the snow didn't hold out for Christmas </3.
Wahhhh
Danes celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve, so on Monday we got up and went to church (the first and probably last time I will go to church in Denmark, most Danes aren't very religious) fun fact, the church in my town is like, 800 years old, and it was a really pivotal part of a very bloody war between Denmark and Sweden in the 1500's, and so now there's a sword hanging in the church, and legend has it that if it ever falls the war will re-continue ooooo. Then my host grandparents, host uncle and cousins and host uncle's girlfriend all came over and we had a DELICIOUS CHRISTMAS DINNER. I'll post another blog about the differences between Denmark and the US's Christmases, so you can read about it there. Then we danced around the tree (very traditional and unique experience) and spent the next like, 3? hours opening allll the presents under the tree. After that, exhausted, we collapsed into bed.
Christmas decorations
They use hearts as decorations for Christmas which I find really cute.
Our 10 billion advent candles
Christmas tree with all our presents!
All the kids
Lucio, the exchange student from Argentina that I'm currently living with
Christmas table
They light real candles on the tree, but only for when we're dancing around it
My host cousins literally crawled under the tree looking for presents
Min sød værstfamilie
Then for Christmas Day, we had 26 guests over, which I thought would be impossible because we have a pretty small house, but it actually worked out really well. They were all my host dad's family, and get this, they're all half Oregonian! Half of them have lived in Seaside and my host cousin was looking at moving back to Oregon and it was so crazy, like a little piece of home. We also played pakkeleg, this crazy game where everyone brings a gift and puts it on the table, and then we pass around dice and whenever you roll a 6, you can take a gift. Once all the gifts have been taken, you take them from each other and it gets pretty intense. I won some body butter from the Body Shop which was basically perfect.
And then no, Christmas does not end with Christmas, so on the 26th we went over to my host grandparents (on my host mom's side, the ones we spent Christmas Eve with because my other host grandparents live in OREGON) and ate even MORE FOOD. Danes certainly win the most crazy about Christmas award like I can't even I loved it.
It was such a nice and HUGE Christmas and I'm actually really sad that my Danish Christmas is finally over. Today I'm gonna go into Copenhagen and buy some Danish Christmas stuff to take home so I can attempt to celebrate a Danish Christmas next year too!
Alicia
Thursday, December 6, 2012
I hate coming up with names for my blog posts
Hey everyone!
Soo my mom said I should write a blog post for once, so here's a written blog post that won't take you 20 minutes to get through like my videos do.
A few weeks ago I thought it would be really great to make a Thanksgiving dinner for my host family, and since my host mom has Thursdays off from work, we were actually able to have in on Thanksgiving. Thankfully, since I'm a terrible cook, my host mom kind of took over the dinner, and made most of the food. I still made the pumpkin pies, mashed potatoes, and stuffing, but she made the turkey, sweet potatoes, salad, mud pie, and probably much much more that I actually can't remember right now. And it was so sweet, I love that she made a Thanksgiving dinner for me, that's actually one of the nicest things that anyone's really done for me, so tak for det Lene! And we had my oldie and host grandparents over and ate a lot and it was just really hyggeligt. I'd put some pictures up but we only got a picture of the table and some awkward selfies so really I won't waste your time.
Then last Monday I went to a Swedish House Mafia Concert in Copenhagen, which was so so fun just omg. I went with a ton of exchange students and we got squeezed to death in the mosh pit so then me and my Australian friend went up to the balcony to watch. Where we so luckily ended up standing next to this really questionable woman, who was dancing like I don't even know she was dancing so weird, and she was using quite a lot of space, and she was not having it when I came and stood next to her. So then I proceeded to be elbowed in the head and stepped on for the next couple hours, but you know what it was worth it so it's okay. The concert was so good, and so fun and just wee! Here's some pictures:
Soo my mom said I should write a blog post for once, so here's a written blog post that won't take you 20 minutes to get through like my videos do.
A few weeks ago I thought it would be really great to make a Thanksgiving dinner for my host family, and since my host mom has Thursdays off from work, we were actually able to have in on Thanksgiving. Thankfully, since I'm a terrible cook, my host mom kind of took over the dinner, and made most of the food. I still made the pumpkin pies, mashed potatoes, and stuffing, but she made the turkey, sweet potatoes, salad, mud pie, and probably much much more that I actually can't remember right now. And it was so sweet, I love that she made a Thanksgiving dinner for me, that's actually one of the nicest things that anyone's really done for me, so tak for det Lene! And we had my oldie and host grandparents over and ate a lot and it was just really hyggeligt. I'd put some pictures up but we only got a picture of the table and some awkward selfies so really I won't waste your time.
Then last Monday I went to a Swedish House Mafia Concert in Copenhagen, which was so so fun just omg. I went with a ton of exchange students and we got squeezed to death in the mosh pit so then me and my Australian friend went up to the balcony to watch. Where we so luckily ended up standing next to this really questionable woman, who was dancing like I don't even know she was dancing so weird, and she was using quite a lot of space, and she was not having it when I came and stood next to her. So then I proceeded to be elbowed in the head and stepped on for the next couple hours, but you know what it was worth it so it's okay. The concert was so good, and so fun and just wee! Here's some pictures:
From left to right:
Patrick, Juan, Mimi, Cassidy, Ed, and me!
Danish flag
Then on Friday my host parents took me to the HC Andersen Christmas market in Odense, which was so cozy. Christmas in Denmark is a huge deal, they get really into advent, so it's like a month long holiday. They have advent candles that they light every day, and melt it down to the next number for the next day, advent calendars, advent lottery calendars, advent candles for every Sunday in their homes, not just in church, and advent gifts for every Sunday. There's not even a way to describe why Christmas is so great in Denmark, I tried to send a box home to capture a Danish Christmas for my mom, but I couldn't, because it's really it's just a feeling, kind of like hygge.
It's also been snowing a ton, which makes it feel so Christmasy! (and cold)
My advent gifts from my first host family.
My first advent gift, an advent lottery calendar and a cute little art project.
My giant Lindt advent calendar, so much nicer than the American ones!
I stayed in Odense Friday night and Saturday so that I could see my friend and tour around Odense. It's where HC Andersen was born, so that's really their main tourist attraction, so we went there and we went shopping a little and it was so nice.
HC Andersen's house, it's under construction right now so it's not that pretty.
Me and Jaidan on HC Andersen's street.
Cute little house
HC Andersen's street
Us in front of HC Andersen's house
Odense is so nestled
A church where some king died or is buried or something
Inside the church
In Denmark they don't decorate their trees until Christmas and wah.
So yeah, that's basically it, I've just been chilling (literally, it's so cold here) and hanging out and enjoying Christmas in Denmark. I hope everything's going well back home and remember that you're not currently living in an arctic tundra ;). (Although really I'm not either).
Alicia
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