Danish Holidays!

We're learning so much about the Danish holidays, and I'd love to share some things with you! This is a *very* Christmas-heavy post, but there are some other interesting traditions that come before that.

I'm going to tell you about the holidays in the way they've been explained to me by various Danes rather than regurgitate some Wikipedia article, so I hope the facts are right and I hope you enjoy!

Mortensaften

A long time ago, there was a guy named Martin who was supposed to become a bishop in the church, but he didn't want to become a bishop. I don't know why. The night before he was supposed to be ordained, he tried to hide in the goose pen to avoid his fate, but the geese didn't like him there and honked loudly. Their honking gave him away, he was made a bishop, and I think he was later a saint. As revenge, there was a big feast on the anniversary of this date each year where goose was the main course.

The Danes call this revenge feast Mortensaften, which means the evening before Mortensmas. Yes, I know the guy's name was Martin. I don't know why it's Morten-. Also, most Danes eat duck instead of goose, which I think is a financial thing. Regardless, it seems like a fun reason to have a feast in the dreary days of autumn.

Our family did not participate in this feast since I learned about it a couple days prior and also do not know how to cook a duck. Or find a duck. Maybe next year?

Luciadag

We first heard about this one when Harrison came home and said he wanted to share a Danish Christmas song he had been learning. He played Santa Lucia in Danish on Spotify and we all agreed it was a very lovely song. He sang along with it very sweetly. He told us that Santa Lucia is celebrated on December 13th, but that his class was going to sing it in early December at the school's Julebazaar. Of course, we listened to him singing it for several weeks, and then on December 1st, he sang it in front of everyone at the school event. I missed it since I was in Spain, but another parent recorded it and shared it. All the kids held a little candle as they sang.

The next day, Saturday, I was in Segovia on a tour of the Cinderella castle, and there was a tapestry of the day Isabella was crowned queen of Castile in Spain. Our tour guide asked us if we noticed anything strange about the image, and we noticed that all the people attending her coronation had no eyes. Our guide told us that was because she was crowned on December 13th, Santa Lucia. I asked if that was the same Santa Lucia from the Danish song, and of course he didn't know, but I started putting things together. He told us that they had no eyes because Santa Lucia had been blinded.

The tapestry from the castle (which I did not photograph, so I pulled this from Wikimedia commons)

Soooo, since then, I've heard a lot about her. She was a good woman who tended to the sick and the poor every chance she got, but she did it in secret. She needed her hands free to work, but it was often dark and she had to carry candles for light, so she wore a crown of candles as she worked. What happens next, I am still unsure of. In one version, I heard that she refused to give up her vow of celibacy to get married, and in another version, I heard her betrothed found out that she had used all the money in her dowry to help the sick and poor. Either way, the guy she was supposed to marry got mad and turned her over to the Romans, and the Romans hated the Christians, and they figured she was a Christian because of all her do-gooding. They decided to execute her. I hear that they burned her and they blinded her, but her sight magically returned somehow and she wouldn't die or be silenced, so finally, they stabbed her in the throat. They made her a saint posthumously. 

Now, on December 13th, there is a festival to remember her. Groups of people dress in white. One person represents Santa Lucia and walks at the front of the procession with a crown of candles on her head. Each person in the rest of the procession carries a single candle and they walk through the halls of the school, office, elderly care facility, etc. singing Santa Lucia to remember her as the bringer of light.

One of my colleagues said that they used to always use real candles, and the Santa Lucia procession is usually done by children, so many times the girl who represented Santa Lucia would have to spend a considerable amount of time picking wax from her hair, and than many of the other girls would have singed hair because the the other girls from the procession, all holding a real candle, often resulted in some of the children burning the hair of the person in front of them. So I guess now they use mostly battery-operated candles.

Finally, Vibe shared with me that sometimes, our building at work does a Santa Lucia procession in white lab coats. I don't know if it happened this year because Vibe and I took the 13th off to go Christmas shopping, but I'd like to imagine it did.

Juletid

Here we go! The big one! This is basically "Christmastime" and while the decorations and candy and gløgg and marzipan start showing up in stores around Halloween, the real holiday starts the first of December. I know this because I started decorating our office by hanging up my Star Wars snowflakes at the end of November and my colleagues said it was too early. (On the other hand, we had our ALK Christmas party at the end of November, so I think the rules are loose.)

Yes, I brought my hand-crafted Star Wars snowflakes with me to Denmark.

Our little office Christmas tree.

The Danes really love Christmas. There are Christmas lights in all the mid-town shopping areas strung across the pedestrian spaces, there are Christmas markets everywhere selling æbleskivers and gløgg, and it's always very beautiful at night. I'm sure my cell-phone-in-the-dark photos don't do it justice.

I don't even know how to describe all the little Christmastime customs this country holds dear...I guess I'll just jump in!

I think I have to start with the julenisser.

The julenisser are kind of like Christmas elves or gnomes. (Jul = Christmas, nisse = elf/gnome, and the -er suffix pluralizes it). The tradition started on farms centuries ago, where every farm had a nisse who lived in the barn. To keep the nisse happy, the family had to feed it big bowls of hot rice porridge with a pat of butter on top. The nisse could help around the farm and ensure a good crop year...or the opposite if your risengrød offerings sucked.

Anyway, eventually, people moved into the city and the nisser came, too, so the story shifted to each family having a nisse or two in the attic of the house. During December, kids make little nissedøre (elf doors) and the nisser come into the house through the doors while the kids are sleeping and play silly tricks. If you leave risengrød with a big pat of butter on it for your nisser, they might leave you presents. You don't see the nisser, but you know they're there.

The nissedør Harrison made and taped up in the living room. There's another one in his bedroom.

I also bought Harrison a nissehue (elf hat).

Little nisse!

This kind of leads into the advent presents. The advent (or the four weeks leading up to Christmas) is celebrated in Denmark a few different ways. First, most families make or buy an advent wreath, which is laid on a table or shelf. Four pillar candles are placed in the wreath, one representing each of the four Sundays before Christmas. You light one candle the first Sunday, two the second Sunday, and so on.

Another way they celebrate the advent is by giving presents to their children or significant other on each of the four Sundays leading up to Christmas. If you leave a shoe on the windowsill at night, your nisser might also leave you a small gift on each of the Sundays inside your shoe. (This would be in place of a Christmas stocking like we do in the U.S.)

Speaking of the advent and kind of counting down to Christmas, they're big into advent calendars, too. Sure, in the U.S., you could get the little chocolate ones from a single manufacturer at Super 1 for a couple dollars, or maybe the wine or beer advent calendar at Costco, but Denmark has got an advent calendar for everyone, and they are all in every store everywhere.

This photo is from our tiny local grocery store in late October.

We were also given delicious chocolate advent calendars at work. My office mate says that it offends the nisse if you don't open the julekalender on the correct days.

The Danes also make Christmas countdown candles that have 24 little tick marks down the outside. You're supposed to light the candle for a little bit every evening, just enough to burn down to the next tick mark, and then you count down to Christmas with this candle. It seems hard.

Are we adopting the advent wreath/candles/presents/calendars and julenisser? Well, the kids all have advent calendars, as usual, and Zac and I both have one from work. We have some nissedøre in our home, and Harrison has a great time leaving us notes from them and trying to confuse us by putting random toys in a small backpack and sliding it mysteriously down the long hallway to our feet and then quickly ducking out of sight, but other than that, we have not gotten very ambitious about nisser tricks. Also, when I asked the kids if they wanted to do julenisser shoe gifts or stockings, they chose stockings. We did not sit down together and craft an adventskrans (advent wreath), buy advent candles, or buy a countdown to Christmas candle, but I am not opposed to getting more into that stuff next year!

This is a good time to discuss the crafting at Christmas. As I mentioned above, the Danes often make their own advent wreaths. Crafts are very important at Christmastime, and it's an opportunity for families to spend time together creating their decorations for the year. In addition to the advent wreath, they make a lot of paper crafts: paper chains for the Christmas tree, woven hearts, cone baskets for treats, and paper stars.

The paper chains are just easy and fun and nice. We make those in the U.S. for various things, too, of course. The woven hearts are called julehjerter (Christmas hearts) and it is said that they were invented by Hans Christian Andersen. Some are very simple (I made one at work and it still took me three tries to get it right...), and others are very intricate.

Thanks again, Wikimedia commons! I forgot to take a picture of the one I made at work.

The hearts are two-dimensional and can thus be used as little baskets for candy on the tree, but another crafty tradition is to make cone baskets for treats. You hang them on the tree and put little cookies (pebernødder - more on them later) inside. Harrison made one and is giving it to Kaden for Christmas. Shhh. Don't tell.

The last one is the stjernestrimler, or star strips. Amanda had crafted these with Vibe one Christmas in Denmark and bough some paper strips so we could do it in the U.S., too. Together, she and I made some sjernestrimler, and some of them still survive! We have three on the tree this year.

See how cute they are?

And at school, Harrison's class cut out printed pieces of snowmen to make little ornaments, but he rescued some of the leftover prints and brought them home for us to make our own snowmen. It was a fun little moment with my littlest boy.

Little paper crafts!

Are we joining the Christmas crafting craze? Aside from the things we did at work and school, we haven't really done anything at home, but I do like the concept of coming together as a family and making some of your decorations, so again, we might start incorporating a few Danish traditions into our other family activities next year!

What about gatherings and games, you ask?

The Danes really like Christmas get-togethers with friends, neighbors, colleagues, and other groups. The parties are kind of, in general, called julefrokosten (Christmas lunches), regardless of what time of day they happen. There are typically julefrokost invitations for people every weekend, which I've heard (and can imagine) gets very exhausting. Fortunately, we don't know that many people yet. :)

The traditional julefrokost serves traditional Danish foods like pickled herring (sild) and flæskesteg (a pork roast with a crispy skin layer on top that crunches hard and tastes like bacon) with rødkål (shredded red cabbage in vinegar and honey) and kartofler (little Danish potatoes) with pebersauce (like a brown peppered gravy). At the one ALK hosted for us, we basically had all of this, including the typical dessert, risalamande, a rice pudding with chopped up almonds, vanilla and sugar, and whipped cream that is served with a cherry sauce drizzled on top. There's a game people play when they serve this at a julefrokost in which they leave a single whole almond in the bowl of risalamande, then spoon the dessert into the guests' bowls. Everyone eats their little bowl very carefully to try to find the almond. If you find the whole almond, the host gives you a little present.

Our company julefrokost started with a little pre-pre-party in our department, where I was given "Gammel Dansk" (old Danish), which is a traditional liquor that (mostly older) Danes take a little shot of in the morning during the holidays. It tastes a little like Jäegermeister. It's not good. Also, they say you don't take a shot of it alone, so others volunteered to do it with me.

In the picture below, you can see the little bottle of Gammel Dansk next to my gin and tonic and two mixed drinks made with some kind of plum liquor that someone in Germany made and gifted to Lene. ("Plum & Stormy" and "Plum-ipolitan") They weren't too bad, but even though I can hold my own drinking, four drinks at 3 p.m. before another 10 hours of party time felt like a bit much. (Don't worry, I at least dumped out the gin and tonic because it looked like water.)

There are other little get-togethers that I don't think count as a julefrokost, but are still fun and festive. We attended one just this past Sunday at our neighbor's home!

(Amanda got to go to one of these get-togethers last year while she was visiting Denmark and she said everyone was wearing black sweaters. I stole Zac's so I could assimilate.)

P.S. No one was wearing a black sweater at this one except me.

People dress up and gather over æbleskivers and gløgg to chat and enjoy each others' company. I think I've talked about both æbleskivers and gløgg before, but to describe them here, æbleskivers are little circular pancake-type balls that are normally served with strawberry jam and powdered sugar to dip them in. You can actually get these at Old European in Post Falls, and they have some that are stuffed with sausage that are delicious. :) The gløgg is either red or white wine that is mulled with winter spices. It's served hot in a mug with a spoon because they add raisins and almond slivers, which soak up the wine and then you eat them, too. I actually prefer mine strained (I don't like the chunks in my wine), and I like both the red and the white. Zac thinks it's too sweet, so I always finish his. Some people add a very strong Danish flavored alcohol called snaps (which is not the same as schnapps, apparently) to their gløgg, and other people just spike it with stronger liquor. I had a mug of it with some Disaronno amaretto and it was amazing...

Gløgg served by the canteen at work (with a vanilla cake). Mmmm. Can you see the almonds and raisins?

There are many traditional Danish treats. They do like to bake specific cookies this time of year. There are three that I'm aware of. Khloe had a cookie-baking date at her friend's home where they made all of these!

Pebernødder (pepper nuts) are really tiny brown cookies that have different spices in them, including pepper. They are about the size of a marble and people put them in those little crafted cones that hang on the tree.

Brønkage (brown cake) is the Danish equivalent of gingerbread. They make these cookies into many different shapes, and they are made from a brown spiced dough that is supposed to be very finicky. I have seen them topped with little pieces of nuts most commonly.

The last one is the vaniljekranser (vanilla wreath), and it's simple and delicious. It's a crunchy little vanilla butter cookie piped out in the shape of a wreath.

In the picture below, you can see them all on the counter at Khloe's friend's house. The vaniljekranser are buy the group of girls, the pebernødder are in front of that near the bottom left, and the brønkager are on the bottom center.

There are also just TUBES of marzipan in all the stores right now, and one of our neighbors, also an immigrant from the U.S., said they use it kind of like modeling clay to make little shapes or characters, then they maybe bake and decorate them. I'm unclear about that part. I'd just eat it from the tube. Marzipan is yummy and reminds me of the almond extract in my mom's delicious sour cream cookies that I grew up on.

We talked about the mulled wine, but I forgot about the Christmas beers!

In Denmark, they brew beers specifically at the holiday season with different cozy winter-y tastes. (I know they do this to a lesser degree in the U.S., too.) These beers are only available in November and December and there is a special way of celebrating their release. One of the breweries, Tuborg, I think, pioneered a kind of mini-holiday called J-Dag (J-day), which falls on the first Friday of November. Every Christmas brew (julebryg) becomes available at 20:59 (8:59 p.m.) on that day, and when the clock turns over, they take their first drink of the julebryg and sing the J-day song in large groups. We missed J-dag this year because, even though I saw it all over Instagram, I didn't know what it was until afterward when people started talking about it.

Zac and I are doing our best to sample all of the julebryger. I have yet to find a favorite. Zac prefers to buy the Harboe julebryg. I don't know if it's really the best or not, but it's the one the Christmas tree farm owner gave him and was the first one he ever tried, so maybe it has a soft spot in his heart.

Happy holidays from Carlsberg!

Other traditions the kids helped me recall:

The Danes open their presents and have their big meal on December 24th. As the descendants of Norwegians, we also did this growing up in my family, so this is not strange to me, but I get approached almost daily by a Dane asking me if we are going to open presents on the 24th or the 25th.

Kaden said that the Danes buy their Christmas trees closer to Christmas and don't typically decorate them until the whole family is gathered on Christmas Eve. Then they decorate the tree and dance around it holding hands and singing before you open presents.

I also learned that Santa (or julemanden) is not a huge deal here. Yes, he visits and brings a little present, but as I mentioned before, he doesn't fill stockings or anything, he just brings a little gift. He also does it around dinnertime while the kids are still awake. After dinner, there is often a stirring in the garden, and the julemand pops out from behind a tree or something. He walks up to the house and gives the children a gift and then goes away again.

On one of the local Facebook pages, people were trying to organize a "trade" in their julmanden (i.e. the uncle or dad or grandpa of one family would go play julemand for another person's family). Such collaboration. :)

Julemanden also lives in Greenland and he doesn't have a specific suit. Sometimes, it's just red robes, sometimes it's furs. You don't leave him cookies or milk or anything like that.

What will we do about Santa? The short answer is: I don't know yet. I think it's nice to keep some of our American traditions, but I also think it's fun that Zac and I both have Scandinavian ancestry and can take this opportunity to incorporate some old-world traditions into our celebration as well. As I previously said, the kids wanted to keep the stockings, so maybe Santa will visit us this year and leave presents under the tree for the kids to discover Christmas morning, but maybe next year, julemanden will pop out from behind the big chestnut tree in the garden (pleeeeeeease, Zac?!) We also love decorating in early December so our house looks cozy and festive all month (and then some). So again, we'll probably do some kind of mash-up and hope that regardless of how we celebrate, the kids will have a nice time and remember their holidays as fun and happy.

Mistletoe hanging between the kitchen and living room, Christmas star above the back door, and cardinal-and-cone garland above the dining room window.

"SNOW" blocks, Santa hat, and my "Baby's 1st Christmas" photo on the mantle. (Don't worry -  our candles are remote-controlled.)

Not a single Precious Moments manger piece was broken during the move!

Our Santa couldn't handle 220V and got pretty fried when we plugged him in. Forgot to check that one.

Our stockings are hung by the back door with care
(since we can't drill into the brick fireplace).

We found a wonderful Christmas tree farm not too far away and we will definitely go back again next year. We started off buying some æbleskivers to share, then we got free cups of gløgg and hot chocolate to drink by the fire.

We were going to cut down our own tree, but they had already pre-cut so many beautiful trees that we couldn't justify cutting down another one. The pre-cut trees were all tied to stakes in the ground so it looked like they were still standing and you could walk all the way around them to admire them from all sides before choosing yours. There were no bad trees - they were all wonderful.

We picked a tree together, untied it, and brought it up to be wrapped in netting for the trip home. They finished wrapping it up and just nailed two boards in a cross to the bottom of it. We were alarmed! How do you water the tree?! Apparently, the trees last a long time without water, like maybe 2 weeks, and since people normally get them closer to Christmas, this is not an issue. Also, we gave away our Christmas tree holders when we left the U.S. because they were bulky, but they said they do sell them here if you want to keep your tree watered.

We stood chatting with the proprietor for a long time. He gave Zac his first julebryg (Harboe) and stuck another one in Zac's coat pocket for later. He spoke a little English and we spoke a little Danish, so it was a really fun practice conversation and a pleasant evening overall.

With the top of the tree sticking up, the thing was probably 8 feet high, but we crammed it into our Passat with all five of us. Good thing Harrison is short.

We didn't dance or sing around our tree, but we did decorate it together (after a quick stop to get some lights and a tree-topper at the DIY store).

And of course, we've been doing puzzles. All the puzzles.

Also, we finally got a record player and Zac got me an early Christmas gift - the She & Him Christmas album! We've been playing all the Christmas albums, from Willy Nelson to Cabbage Patch Kids (a classic).

So those are the Danish holidays as we know them now! I made a previous post about Danish Halloween, and I'm sure I'll make one about Danish New Year soon - I hear it's a blast!

For now, we'll say god jul, and we hope you all have a really great holiday season!