It’s the last day of the gregorian year. Time to look back at the year gone by and forth to the next years to come. First I’ll look back on the last week:
My Christmas in Denmark
I hope you had a wonderful Christmas (if you celebrate). I did. We celebrated at home on Christmas eve (which is custom in Denmark) with my mother and bonus-dad and my brother, sister in law and nephew. I haven’t spend Christmas Eve with my family for 10 years, so it was really nice. No pics, though. I was too busy to take any.
A lot of now has fallen theis Chrismas. We have mixed feelings about it.
Everybody arrived in the afternoon and at 4pm, we all sat down in front of the TV to watch Disney’s Christmas Cartoons (we have been doing that all my childhood – and they have the same tradition in Dennis’ family, so nobody gets upset that we don’t go to church). We were eating chokolate and nuts and oranges and just enjoying watching the cartoons we know by heart by now.
After that we started setting the table and finishing up the preparation of dinner. We had pork roast and duck (again a tradition from both families) and medisterpølse which is a kind of sausage. With that white boiled potatoes, caramelised potatoes, red cabbage and of course the gravy (which is of very huge importance).
For dessert the traditional Ris a’la mande, a rice pudding in which we place one almond and the one who gets it, wins a price. Rasmus got it.
Then we cleared the table and lit the candles on the Christmas Tree. And the we started dancing around the tree. This is a big deal, as strange as it may seem for people outside Scandinavia, and we sing all the traditional carols (this is where you really show off how good you are at remembering the lyrics) and finish off by singing “Nu’det jul igen” while we dance around the house, entering all the rooms. Take a look at the video. It’s not our family. But it could have been!
After this, presents were handed out, one at a time. In Dennis’ family all gifts must include a poem or a clue on the outside of the package, which you read aloud and then guess on the content. We included that tradition (which, I believe, is Swedish) – and it’s a lot of fun! My favorite was teh one rasmus had written on a gift for me, which turned out to be season 4 of Ugly Betty. It said: You are not ugly :-) Short and to the point!
Crafty content:
I had made the christmas napkins and I had also knitted a few gifts. For my bonus-dad, neckwarmer and hat. Both were knit in a wonderful ONION camel merino:
Gifts for my bonus dad. Made in ONION camel merino
For my mom, I had made a pair of FPK slippers, that I didn’t get a FO pic of.
I love getting presents. And from my wonderful husband I got two hard-to-get knitting books, that I’ve been searching for for quite some time:
My pressies from Dennis. The Zimmermann book was late, so he made me an IOU
Knitting from the top and The opinionated knitter.
On christmas day we drove to Sweden to spend a few days having Christmas Lunches with Dennis’ family. I had way too much schnaps and it took a few days for me to fully recover :-) But allin all I had a very nice Christmas and I don’t mind if I get to celebrate again in two years tiem (next year, we will probably go away to somewhere warm, when the kids are with the otehr parents).
Did you have a nice Christmas? Get any sewing or knitting presents?
It sounds like a wonderful celebration! I love the tradition of putting clues on the outside of the gifts – so fun!