I hope you've all had a wonderful Christmas! I know I did!
It was really nice to go back home and see my family as well as my best friend, I will have to try and get up there and see them more often while I'm still in Norway.
In Norway, as I might have written before, we celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve. When we get up in the morning Santa's been to fill up the stockings with sweets and put one present for each under the tree (My family usually puts the rest of the presents under later in the day).
After we've had a nice Christmas breakfast, and as long as we're not working (downside of not celebrating on the 25th I guess), we read Christmas comics and watch some TV. The Norwegian Brodcasting Corporation (NRK) every year show some Disney favourites as well as two films that I have been watching pretty much my whole life. I think I will have to get them on DVD as I missed watching them when I lived in England and Australia. I also want to get them on DVD so that when I have kids they can grow up watching it as well, no matter which country I live in.
One of the films is a Czech version of Cinderella. Cinderella gets 3 hazelnuts and in each of the hazelnuts there is an outfit; a hunting outfit, a ball gown and a wedding dress. Even though it's a rubbish film by today's standards and it's dubbed with only one man doing all the voices I just love it! I guess it's because I've been watching it probably since the year I was born. The film itself is from 1973.
The second film that's traditional to watch is "Reisen til julestjernen" (Journey to the Christmas Star). This is a Norwegian film from 1976. It's about a little princess who wants the real Christmas star on the top of the Christmas tree (we have stars not angels on our trees). Her evil uncle tells her to go out and look for it in the middle of the night and so she disappears, so does the queen, and so the king curses the Christmas star so that it disappears too! Years later some travellers come to the city and with them is a young girl, Sonja, she tells the king she will find the Christmas star again and when it appears the princess and queen will come back as well. Sonja gets some help from Santa, The evil uncle finds out that Sonja is the missing princess and tries to stop her. But all ends well in the end.
They have also made a new version of this film earlier this year, I'm not sure I want to see it, they've removed the song everyone loves in the original apparently, but then again I guess it's hard to be impartial... I at least hope that if they decide to start showing that one on TV Christmas Eve that they also keep showing the original.
Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked.
At 5pm the church bells rings Christmas in and a lot of people goes to church, we on the other hand have our dinner at 5pm. At Christmas we dress for dinner. I almost got a bit stressed this year as I was making my own dinner. In Norway Christmas dinner is often lamb or pork ribs, or both as my family has, I've never really liked either so even before I became vegetarian I usually had rice porridge for dinner. This year I made potato and leek soup, very simple but quite filling because of the potatoes. The reason I got a little stressed is because I was getting ready while cooking dinner, so I had to run into the kitchen a few times as I was getting ready to make sure I got everything I needed into the soup. I wasn't just getting dressed, I was also doing my hair, which I didn't decide to until one hour before dinner was supposed to be done.
My grandparents on my mum's side both had dinner with us this year. They get along really well with each other even though they're divorced. My sister was also celebrating at our mum's instead of our dad's this year. It was really nice to be able to spend time with everyone.
After dinner we stayed at the dinner table for a while, everyone was too full to move! That's the problem with Christmas, to much tasty food, it's hard to stop eating! When we were able to move we just moved over to the sofa while some put the dished in the dishwasher. We had a really simple dessert, after all that food I don't think it's possible to have a heavy dessert as well! It's difficult to say what we had because it's all very Norwegian, although one of the things was home-made rice pudding with strawberry sauce.
After dessert we often play boardgames, like Trivial Pursuit, but this year because there was so many of us (in my family 6 is many) we would have had to move to do that, which nobody wanted, so instead we had a little quiz (my mum, sister and I played a board game Christmas Day instead). I read the questions and whoever answered first got a point. It was really fun, even though I was the one reading the questions I didn't know who was winning because my sister was the one writing the score down. My mum's partner won with 17 points.
We stopped the quiz at 8pm to start opening presents. It kind of varies when we open the presents depending on how old the kids are and how many presents there are but as far as I can remember it's usually always after 8pm.
I have found out that every family opens their presents differently. In some families everyone opens their present at the same time, while others might make the brother open all his presents before the sister opens all hers and the the mother and so on. I my family one person gets the presents from under the tree, usually my sister as she's the youngest, she reads the label; who it's to and from, and then gives it to that person to open while everybody watches. My sister of course gets the most as she's still fairly young, and it's really nice to see her open her present as she's so excited!
The way we open our presents of course means that it takes a while to finish all of them, which means I was really tired by the time we finished. I usually go to bed at 9pm! It was nice though, I love watching people's faces as they open their presents, not just the ones from me but other ones as well. Some people stop giving presents to their siblings or parents as they get older, they focus on the kids, nieces, nephews, grand-kids, etc instead, which is understandable, it can get quite expensive if you have a big family, but I hope I will always give to my parents and my sister, even if it's just something small, it doesn't have to be expensive, just to see the look on someone's face when they get a present they like. You can't put a price on that.
When we did finally finish with all the presents we all just sat and chatted for a bit, or played/looked at our presents before my grandparents left and the rest of us one by one went to bed.
How did you celebrate your Christmas? Do you have any special Christmas traditions?
It was really nice to go back home and see my family as well as my best friend, I will have to try and get up there and see them more often while I'm still in Norway.
In Norway, as I might have written before, we celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve. When we get up in the morning Santa's been to fill up the stockings with sweets and put one present for each under the tree (My family usually puts the rest of the presents under later in the day).
After we've had a nice Christmas breakfast, and as long as we're not working (downside of not celebrating on the 25th I guess), we read Christmas comics and watch some TV. The Norwegian Brodcasting Corporation (NRK) every year show some Disney favourites as well as two films that I have been watching pretty much my whole life. I think I will have to get them on DVD as I missed watching them when I lived in England and Australia. I also want to get them on DVD so that when I have kids they can grow up watching it as well, no matter which country I live in.
One of the films is a Czech version of Cinderella. Cinderella gets 3 hazelnuts and in each of the hazelnuts there is an outfit; a hunting outfit, a ball gown and a wedding dress. Even though it's a rubbish film by today's standards and it's dubbed with only one man doing all the voices I just love it! I guess it's because I've been watching it probably since the year I was born. The film itself is from 1973.
The second film that's traditional to watch is "Reisen til julestjernen" (Journey to the Christmas Star). This is a Norwegian film from 1976. It's about a little princess who wants the real Christmas star on the top of the Christmas tree (we have stars not angels on our trees). Her evil uncle tells her to go out and look for it in the middle of the night and so she disappears, so does the queen, and so the king curses the Christmas star so that it disappears too! Years later some travellers come to the city and with them is a young girl, Sonja, she tells the king she will find the Christmas star again and when it appears the princess and queen will come back as well. Sonja gets some help from Santa, The evil uncle finds out that Sonja is the missing princess and tries to stop her. But all ends well in the end.
They have also made a new version of this film earlier this year, I'm not sure I want to see it, they've removed the song everyone loves in the original apparently, but then again I guess it's hard to be impartial... I at least hope that if they decide to start showing that one on TV Christmas Eve that they also keep showing the original.
Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked.
At 5pm the church bells rings Christmas in and a lot of people goes to church, we on the other hand have our dinner at 5pm. At Christmas we dress for dinner. I almost got a bit stressed this year as I was making my own dinner. In Norway Christmas dinner is often lamb or pork ribs, or both as my family has, I've never really liked either so even before I became vegetarian I usually had rice porridge for dinner. This year I made potato and leek soup, very simple but quite filling because of the potatoes. The reason I got a little stressed is because I was getting ready while cooking dinner, so I had to run into the kitchen a few times as I was getting ready to make sure I got everything I needed into the soup. I wasn't just getting dressed, I was also doing my hair, which I didn't decide to until one hour before dinner was supposed to be done.
My grandparents on my mum's side both had dinner with us this year. They get along really well with each other even though they're divorced. My sister was also celebrating at our mum's instead of our dad's this year. It was really nice to be able to spend time with everyone.
After dinner we stayed at the dinner table for a while, everyone was too full to move! That's the problem with Christmas, to much tasty food, it's hard to stop eating! When we were able to move we just moved over to the sofa while some put the dished in the dishwasher. We had a really simple dessert, after all that food I don't think it's possible to have a heavy dessert as well! It's difficult to say what we had because it's all very Norwegian, although one of the things was home-made rice pudding with strawberry sauce.
After dessert we often play boardgames, like Trivial Pursuit, but this year because there was so many of us (in my family 6 is many) we would have had to move to do that, which nobody wanted, so instead we had a little quiz (my mum, sister and I played a board game Christmas Day instead). I read the questions and whoever answered first got a point. It was really fun, even though I was the one reading the questions I didn't know who was winning because my sister was the one writing the score down. My mum's partner won with 17 points.
We stopped the quiz at 8pm to start opening presents. It kind of varies when we open the presents depending on how old the kids are and how many presents there are but as far as I can remember it's usually always after 8pm.
I have found out that every family opens their presents differently. In some families everyone opens their present at the same time, while others might make the brother open all his presents before the sister opens all hers and the the mother and so on. I my family one person gets the presents from under the tree, usually my sister as she's the youngest, she reads the label; who it's to and from, and then gives it to that person to open while everybody watches. My sister of course gets the most as she's still fairly young, and it's really nice to see her open her present as she's so excited!
The way we open our presents of course means that it takes a while to finish all of them, which means I was really tired by the time we finished. I usually go to bed at 9pm! It was nice though, I love watching people's faces as they open their presents, not just the ones from me but other ones as well. Some people stop giving presents to their siblings or parents as they get older, they focus on the kids, nieces, nephews, grand-kids, etc instead, which is understandable, it can get quite expensive if you have a big family, but I hope I will always give to my parents and my sister, even if it's just something small, it doesn't have to be expensive, just to see the look on someone's face when they get a present they like. You can't put a price on that.
When we did finally finish with all the presents we all just sat and chatted for a bit, or played/looked at our presents before my grandparents left and the rest of us one by one went to bed.
How did you celebrate your Christmas? Do you have any special Christmas traditions?
1 comment:
Happy holidays! It's nice to finally see the face of the owner of this blog! :)
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