Christmas in Denmark was absolutely fantastic, everything was exactly as I imagined. I love all of the Danish Christmas traditions. I reckon some of them are Als family specific but as a whole, Denmark has many traditions that are common between everyone. I suppose it’s the homogeneity of the society here, but it makes for very cozy holidays!
Mike Prible came down to celebrate with us, which was awesome. He has been stuck in Sweden for some time now so I kind of insisted that he come down and spend some Scandinavian holidays with us. I think he enjoyed it! :)
So what about these traditions?
Juletræ (Christmas Tree)
Christian and I got our own little tree. It’s not as Charlie Brown as I was originally expecting. It’s no Curley traditional Frazer Fur but she’s a beauty just the same! Danish Christmas trees typically have hearts, the Danish flag and even real candles amongst regular ornaments. We left the lit candle business to Christian’s dad who hosted our Christmas Eve. But the candles are only really lit when everyone is dancing around the tree and singing. Yep, you read that right. It’s pretty hard core.
Æbleskiver, Gløgg and “Konfekt”
Now… æbleskriver sits high in my top favorite things about Denmark. I think it might be number three? Æbleskiver literally translates into “apple slices” which is kind of ridiculous seeing as apples have nothing to do with what I would describe as pancake balls! O-M-G these little pancake balls are bites of heaven, I’m telling you. They’re eaten with jam/marmalade and powdered sugar. I find it disappointing that these are only really widely available during Christmas. So I just need an æbleskriver maker!
Gløgg is a traditional Christmas red wine that is served hot with nuts and raisins mixed in. YUM! We drink gløgg while we make konfekt and eat æbleskriver. :D Konfekt just means candy making with soft nougat, marzipan, and melted chocolate supplemented by nuts, sprinkles, fruits, liquors, etc.
Nisses (Christmas Elves?)
I don’t know how to best describe a Nisse. I consider them to be small elves that wear Santa hats and they live in the attic and talk to the pets of the home. Keeping them happy is important and involves leaving them porridge to eat, I believe. When things go missing in the house, it’s likely that your Nisse is upset. Nisses are never seen but they are a very popular Christmas decoration inspiration!
Juleaften (Christmas Eve)
Unlike in the States, the big Christmas get together with dinner, gifts, etc all happens on Christmas Eve. Santa even stops by the house during the celebration. Typically the night kicks off with dinner followed by singing and dancing around the Christmas tree (again, I’m serious) and then gift opening. Santa visits at some point before the gift opening, usually towards the end of dinner. After gift opening there are some more desserts (konfekt and cookies and such) and socializing. Some families then head to midnight mass followed by more food late night afterwards. This year we called it a night after socializing for a bit.
Christmas dinner!
Christmas dinner in Christian’s family has always been hugely traditional. I’ve been told that way back when families either had pork or duck as the main dish depending on how much money they had. Pork being for the poorer families and duck for the richer. So now many families (including ours) eat both!
One other must-have in many Danish families is Ris a la mande! O-M-G this also makes my top favorites list. This is a sweet rice pudding mixed with whipped cream, sugar vanilla and almond pieces. This is served cold and then with a warm cherry sauce on top. Drooling just thinking about it. There is a game to look for a whole almond in your portion. Whoever has an entire almond wins a prize. Part of the game involves keeping it a secret as long as you can. Guess who won this year? Yep Mike found the whole almond in his second bite… so imagine my surprise when he goes for seconds without even mentioning it! I was pissed! Haha. JK! Christian has not won, ever. Not in 26 years. Even I won several years ago. Poor thing. ;)
Other traditional foods are boiled potatoes, brown sugar potatoes (boiled potatoes covered in caramelized sugar), warm red cabbage, and gravies of course. So delicious. I might need to make dinner immediately…
Juledag (Christmas Day)
Recovery from over eating and drinking. Perhaps coupled with more overeating when visiting extended family. In our case I made breakfast burritos to absorb any red wine headache still lingering. We opened presents from Mike, our stockings (I have to keep some American traditions, duh!), and gifts from Santa to hubby and wifey.
Check out some photos from our superb Christmas. We are so lucky and grateful for all that we have and all the family we can share it with. And we were so glad to have Mike celebrate with us this year!
**Some of these images are rather blurry, hard to catch the essence of the lighting so we were fussing with camera settings quite a bit!
(this would be a picture of the singing thing... i told you it's true)
Friday, January 7, 2011 at 10:48AM 
