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
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