December 31, 2020

As a Dane, religion does not play a significant role, except for how it is ingrained into our culture, norms, and traditions and how our morals were built up over the last one thousand years. Around the year 1000 CE Christianity came knocking on the door, and one of the last Viking kings, Harald Bluetooth, had little choice but to let in these visitors and their new traditions. While Viking traditions survived for another hundred years or so following this intrusion, it was only in remote places. Since then, Denmark has continuously been impacted by foreign practices adding to our culture’s diversity and richness (this is not to be mistaken with the catastrophic colonialism many countries have gone through). However, not being able to change the circumstances of our history in Denmark, I appreciate the concept of mixing and matching traditions on an individual level.

For me, Christmas is the most significant social and traditional event of the year. Let me answer one thing I often get asked, no, we do not celebrate Thanksgiving in Denmark, which in many ways seems to be the most prominent event for most Americans, more so than Christmas. Anyhow, I often have most if not all of my presents ready before December 1st, and finding gifts for people is one of the biggest joys I know. I put a lot of effort into finding something I know they will (hopefully) appreciate and, if nothing else, get a good laugh out of it. This year, since I had learned to crochet a few years ago, many people also found themselves receiving homemade gifts. I seem to have turned stress-relief into mass production of little colorful owls. I do not usually give homemade presents, as I am usually not a crafts-person, but why not once in a while!

Raffle Game

What I didn’t get to do this year was the Danish raffle game. Here are the rules: say you are a group of 4-6 people, each should bring 2-3 small presents (usually 3-6 dollar’s worth. nothing fancy!). We pile the presents in the center of the table. Then, with a dice you have to roll either a 6 or 1. If you roll a 6, you remove a present from the center and place it in front of you. If you roll a 1, you remove a present from the center and put it in front of somebody else of your choice. When there are no more presents left in the center of the table, one person will set the alarm for a time only he or she knows, e.g., 8 minutes. Now the real game starts, often rushing to pass the dice on to the next person before grabbing a present if you were lucky to roll a 6 or a 1. So, once again, the rules are the same as before. Only, this time with a 6, you take a present from somebody else and place in front of you, and if you roll a 1, you take a present from somebody else and hand it to another person. This game is so much fun, as on occasion you sit without a single present, and somebody has a huge pile, which can change in a minute, as people create alliances to fall out of the alliance and build a new one, all in just 8-12 minutes (or however long you choose to play!).

Once the alarm rings, the game is over, and you are allowed to unwrap all of the presents you have in front of you. Unwrapping presents is a big part of the game. You can encounter anything from a roll of Christmas toilet paper, to a carton of juice, to a can of tuna, chocolates, or more elaborate things like toiletries, games for kids (one year I got a yoyo!), kitchen equipment – essentially – the sky is the limit (or at least what you can find within a $3-5 range!). Two years ago, I was so desperate to play this raffle game that I went to a RiteAid store and spent $100 on a bunch of random things, went home and wrapped it all, and then the next day went to a friend’s house, and the three of us would play. It was great. Although a little expensive!

Ornaments

I cannot tell you exactly when I started having an affinity for Christmas ornaments. I recall when I was 18 years old and moved to my first home on my own, that I got my first little Christmas tree. I was very much into ‘beautiful’ things, and I had gold and blue bows on it, lights, gold stars, and in a fancy store in Copenhagen, I had bought expensive glass ornaments with some gold or silver on them (I don’t remember anymore – they have been in storage for the last ten years or longer!). I recall loving that tree and those ornaments. Then I moved to the United States. My first December here, I walked into the Hallmark store across the street and saw a completely different world than I was used to in Denmark. In Denmark, we used to have more traditional ornaments, although they seem to have caught up a bit over the last years, and now there isn’t a conventional structure or public figure you cannot find as an ornament, whether in textile or glass. AND I LOVE IT! So, the Hallmark store would mostly have movie characters, like any Disney figure you can think of, and later, Star Wars…

As I have always been living in cramped places, ornaments felt like tangible souvenirs (small and portable). When I would visit a museum, they would have ornaments, e.g., I got at-rex, a mammoth, or beautifully decorated Native American ornaments. I have possibly anything with Cinderella. I got a set from Cheers (the bar in Boston, which I sadly just read closed this year! Ay). Well, I cannot begin to mention all of my ornament; you will have to see for yourself one day! But I can tell you. It makes me happy to no end. I can sit and look at my tree and have memories from all the places I have acquired these ornaments over the last many years. My mom and one of my best friends have taken up the challenge and like to give me ornaments. My mom goes back and forth between Georg Jensen ones (which I LOVE!) and odd ones, like a cat, cow, or toucan! While Bodil, my friend, a world champion at crocheting, has made me the most fantastic ornament – a Slash figure (from the band Guns n’ Roses), he hangs next to my Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I figures. Additionally, she has made me a hotdog and some sushi (with wasabi and a fortune cookie!).

You may think that this sounds exceptionally random and cannot possibly look good –I assure you – it is gorgeous (but then, I might be biased). Since I only have a little tree, you may have guessed already that I do not have space for it all. Last year, I decided that my growing Star Wars collection was perhaps better suited as a Nativity scene, which has generated a new tradition. If 2020 brought nothing else, it brought me baby Yoda! -as the perfect addition, completing my Nativity scene. On Epiphany (Feast Day) on January 6th, tradition-wise, my tree will come down, and my ornaments will carefully be wrapped up, ready for next Christmas.

Food

Food plays a huge role in terms of Christmas traditions. Traditions are personal to me, and if I am around people who I know will not appreciate them, they can take the fun out of creating it, and I am better off postponing it to another year. A typical traditional Christmas meal consists of either a roasted duck or a roasted piece of pork with crisp skin (!!), or both! Gravy, based on either roast, white boiled potatoes (the firm kind!), caramelized potatoes, and red cabbage. For dessert, we eat a special kind of rice pudding mixed with chopped blanched almonds, whipped cream (the heavy kind!), and just a spoonful of vanilla and sugar stirred together and topped with a sweet cherry sauce. Now, it is custom that there is ONE WHOLE almond in the bowl, and when you start serving, nobody knows who gets the almond, neither are you allowed to reveal that you got it until everybody is done eating. It is an art form to keep eating and carefully remove the almond from your mouth and hide it. Should you eat it, tough luck. No almond, no almond present. The present is traditionally a marzipan pig, although these years, it can be anything, including charities, such as 6 chickens in Kenya or a gift basket. Stores will even sell-prepacked almond presents, which I got tricked into buying ONCE! Never again! I was going to celebrate Christmas in Switzerland with a friend, and since it would just be the two of us, I thought it would be fun if neither of us knew what it was. Luckily, she got the almond. The present was a brown textile breadbasket! She loved it.

Certain things I insist on making during the holidays is rice pudding. Mmmm… it is like three in one! First, you make the rice pudding, which I eat while warm with cinnamon and sugar; the rest I put into the fridge for the next two stages. In addition to the almond and whipped cream version mentioned above, you can also take some of the cold rice pudding and mix with a bit of flour and an egg, and then fry on a pan like you would a pancake. Also super yummy; just eat warm with a bit of jam. As I am writing this, it has been a whole week of different rice pudding meals, and I feel perfectly content. I have also made another Danish tradition called æbleskiver, another popular thing to eat throughout December, where we also eat marzipan and nougat confect and Christmas cookies. There is a Danish Christmas drink called gløgg, which is essentially a warmed-up red wine mixed with a freshly squeezed orange, some spices like cardamom, cloves, and cinnamon, and then added chopped blanched almonds and raisins which have been soaked in rum (this is not a kid-friendly drink!). No wonder we gain a few pounds over the holidays! ;)

Trees and Advent Calendars

Now, I do not have an opinion of what kind of tree other people should get. That is entirely up to them. What their traditions are, or what environmental circumstances might dictate – maybe you cannot get to a pine tree or have a nice fake one that works every year. That makes little difference to me, as long as there is a space for ornaments. I was lucky to spend three Christmases with my friend in Switzerland, and each year the neighbor farmer permitted us to get a tree from his land. We would go out to the field behind her house, waddle through the snow, bring a saw, and cut down a small tree. It was divine! We would then go back, wait a day or two for it to dry off before placing it in the living room, ready to get adorned. Karen would read Peter’s Christmas for me while we drank a glass of sherry. As a kid, my father, who was very creative, would sometimes, due to space constraints, arrange the tree on a rope, so it could dangle from the high ceiling and then get wired down when we needed it!

He would also arrange for the most elaborate advent calendars, which always required some activity. The concept was always similar; a bunch of numbers – he had a list, and each number corresponded with a specific present. It could also be an orange, a computer game, a pack of cookies, or money which had to go into our socks, that was likewise attached under the ceiling, and like a flag on a pole, the sock needed to be wired up and down every time we had to add money to it. These were great activities. Some years we had to fish for dragons on a little magnetic game, and the dragons would have numbers under them, or fish for magnetic sea-creatures in a winter landscape, or shoot with small darts onto a board that had balloons with numbers in them. Another time it was tin cans he had installed onto a board attached to the ceiling, and with a string in each tin, you had to choose a string while wearing your bike helmet for protection, as you never knew what might come flying down at you. More traditionally, your parents will simply leave a present for you in a sock. As a small child it is every day until Christmas, as you get a little older, your advent calendar usually is on the four Sunday’s of advent, and you get somewhat larger presents.

Christmases

In my 37 years, I have experienced many different kinds of Christmases! As a divorce child, many years I had two or three Christmases! Some were better than others. While I love all of the above traditions, and many years my Christmases are filled with all of these, let us not forget the stress often associated with the holidays. For many people, Christmas comes as a surprise every year, and they have not bought presents, they don’t know what to get each other, or, what I consider a worse trend, to agree not to give anything. Christmas is not meant to be a celebration of capitalism and you should not be buying yourself poor. Homemade presents are welcome; for me, it is a time to forget about the negative things and simply enjoy the little things, and I LOVE giving presents! Culture and traditions, to me, is what makes us truly human. It is something tangible. Something we can all relate to. Something we can talk about. Something to look forward to. Again, it does not have to be expensive, although that often is the case as Santa does not deliver ALL of the presents! Children who believe in Santa, I see it as a way to feed their creative imagination. My stepdad would dress up as Santa for Christmas for my younger siblings when I was a child. One year, I joined him as a Santa’s little helper! Christmas is about bringing fantasy and escape into our lives, and to me, that is magical.

New Year’s Eve

New Year’s Eve is technically not related to Christmas, besides being a week later, and the traditions could not be more different. Unlike in England, where Elizabeth II speaks to the people on Christmas Day, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, performs her annual speech on New Year’s Eve at 6 PM. So, I set the alarm, wake up, and I am ready to enjoy it at 9 AM PST. I am usually watching it with my friend Bodil via Facetime (tradition!). Following her speech, had I been in Denmark, it would be time for dinner. Traditionally, you will eat some fish, but these days, anything goes. Chocolate mousse has been a nice dessert I have enjoyed on more than one New Year’s Eve.

Then, commonly, the next thing is to get drunk! And if you are not drunk by midnight, this following tradition most certainly will help. For as long as I remember (although as a child we obviously did not get drunk!!!), we would watch a German-produced, but English-speaking show, called Dinner for One (https://youtu.be/FksV_7ZYbhY). I recommend you watch it. Whenever James has to drink – you will drink! Try it and you will see what I mean. This ends just before midnight, and we then get ready for the countdown. Here we stand on the chairs, the sofa, the table, whatever it takes, and then we wait for the 10 second countdown, and as the dong sounds at midnight, you JUMP into the new year, preferably while making a lot of noise with assorted plastic whistles and whatnot which came as part of your New Year’s decoration packages you surely have bought. Then, the choir begins, and we sing along to the anthem (even if you cannot sing, nobody notices anything at this point anyway, so go for it!) – and then we start calling family and friends to wish them a happy New Year.

Now, this is NOT how I have spent my last many New Year’s Eves. As you get older, sure, there is usually less focus on the drunken aspect of it; however, I must admit that even in years where there have been no Covid hindering me from going out, I have had little interest since I moved to the US. Had I lived in the city, I think it would have been very different. But, out here in the rural area, people drink and drive, and I do not feel comfortable going anywhere! Which has resulted in me most of the time spending New Year’s Eve alone. Perhaps dinner with some of the old folks, who are in bed by 9 or 10 PM, and then I sit by myself, look at my Christmas tree, watch Dinner for One, smile to myself, reminiscing of past events!

To sum up: I love Christmas, I love traditions, I love culture, I love food. So, on that note, a few hours before midnight, I am wrapping up my blog entry for December. I am ready to go look at my Christmas tree and my ornaments for one last time in 2020 before heading off to bed, planning to wake up refreshed and prepared for one hell of a 2021.

Merry Christmas y’all and I hope you have a HAPPY NEW YEAR.