Today
is a big day in the family household… Elsie Marie had to go to work this morning
and was working until 2.30pm.
In Denmark,
and most of the Nordic and European countries, Christmas is celebrated on Christmas
eve and not on Christmas day like in the Australia. The typical way of spending
Christmas eve is getting together with family, having a nice Christmas dinner,
lighting the candles on the Christmas tree and then dancing around it singing
Christmas carols before then exchanging Christmas presents. The typical Danish
Christmas eve dinner consist of roasted pork and duck served with boiled and brown
potatoes, which are boiled and then sautéed with melted butter and sugar which
results in sweet caramelized potatoes that go perfectly with the duck and pork. They also serve boiled potatoes and crunchy
potato chips along with a cooked pickled red cabbage and rich gravy. For desert, they serve a very special
Christmas Risalamande.
Elsie Marie had prepared the ducks for
Christmas dinner the evening before, so Dudi took over the rest of the
preparation for our meal that night.
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| Making the Risalamande |
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| Christmas Risalamande |
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| Preparing the ducks for Christmas dinner |
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| Preparing Christmas dinner vegetables |
Our morning was spent preparing
food for dinner. First of all the ducks
were put into the oven. These are cooked on a slow heat all day. Dudi then set about making the Risalamande – this is the most famous and traditional Danish Christmas
desert. It is a rice pudding with
vanilla, almonds and whipped cream, and it’s typically served together with
warm cherry sauce. Maria’s family also
serve it with strawberry sauce, so we would have a choice of both…
Although the
Risalamande is a delicious dessert it is also a traditional funny Christmas
game. The Risalamande contains a lot of chopped almonds. It’s a great tradition
that the person who make the dessert leave one almond unchopped. This extra
whole almond is now mixed into the Risalamande. When the dessert is served the person,
who gets the whole almond in his/her serving wins a prize. The prize is
typically a smaller present worth about $10-$20. Because
the whole almond is hidden in the dessert this can result in a lot of very full
stomachs. If the almond is in the bottom of the bowl people normally keep
eating until they have found the almond and won the prize – but that’s just a
funny part of the game. It is probably a
little like the old Australian tradition of finding coins in the plum pudding… This traditional Christmas desert game is
played by Maria’s family and Dudi had a couple of whole almonds put aside so
that she would have one for the desert.
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| Small potatoes for the Sweet Brown Potatoes - a Christmas speciality |
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| Sugar goes into the frying pan... |
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| then all the butter gets added |
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| and finally the potatoes goes into the sticky gooey toffee like consistency |
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| Coating the potatoes with the sweet sugary caramel |
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| Dudi making the brown potatoes |
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| Another batch of the brown potatoes... |
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| pickled red cabbage |
Dudi then
set about preparing the potatoes and red cabbage for the roast duck meal for
dinner… These had all been tackled by lunch time, and then it was time for
Maria’s sisters and Dad to go and collect their grandmother Besta who was
joining us for the Christmas service at their local church where Pete and Maria
got married and then joining us for Christmas dinner…
Church was
at 3pm… It was nice to go back to the quaint village church that holds such
good memories for us of our last visit to Denmark for Pete and Maria’s wedding
at this very church. We were told to be
there almost an hour early just so that we could get a seat as the church packs
out. We arrived 50 minutes early and
were still sitting in make shift chairs right at the very back of the church. Peter joined us along with Maria’s mum, Dudi,
Elsie Marie and Besta. We understood
only three words of the whole sermon, “Virtual Reality” and “Alleluja”.
Although a couple of the hymns had familiar
tunes, we couldn’t understand a word they sang.
Still in our own simple way we were able to be thankful for the birth of
a Saviour who came to redeem us and bring us into fellowship with God the
father…
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| Amazing sunset as we came out of church |
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| Bell Tower |
We came out
of the service to witness the most glorious sunset. There was still snow laying on the ground,
and the skies and heavens were the most beautiful shades, or apricot, pinks,
oranges and golds… Picture perfect in
every way…
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| There was still ice and snow on the ground. Quite magical |
We arrived
home and indulged in some good Christmas cheer and their special Tuborg
Julebryg Christmas beer. This is a
special beer that signals the sign that Christmas is upon the Danes. This beer is only sold for the Christmas
season and is released on the first Friday in November.
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| Danish Christmas beer |
This
annual launch in Denmark, is known as 'J-day', and is a day of celebration
across Denmark. Carlsberg employees drive around in truck to visit bars
and cafés while singing the traditional Tuborg Christmas Brew song and handing
out free beer to the guests to mark the start of the festive season.
The
beer itself is a bottom-fermented wiener beer brewed on lager, münchener and
caramel malt, and added English liquorice. The beer is dark-golden with a
fresh aroma of caramel, cereal, liquorice and blackcurrant and is a little on
the sweet side. Only beer that I have
been able to drink….
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| 24 hours can make a big difference.... no snow today. Perfectly clear,,, |
We got to witness the most glorious sunset here on the farm...
It
was then time to finish cooking the brown (or caramelized) potatoes and then
serve dinner….
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| Brown Sugar Potatoes |
I wasn’t sure how I would
go for dinner, as I have never been a bit fan of rice pudding and watching the
amount of butter and sugar that went into the brown potatoes had me doubting
whether I would enjoy them also. We too
were used to eating a lot more variety of vegetables with our Christmas
lunch. However, I have to say I was
pleasantly surprised, the meal was delicious, the flavours all worked well together,
and I really did enjoy the rice pudding with the cherry sauce. Fortunately for us all, we didn’t have to
have multiple servings of the rice pudding as Maria’s grandmother Besta found
the whole almond in her serving and she was able to claim the present.
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| Setting the table for Christmas Eve Dinner |
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| Traditional Danish Christmas Clemintines |
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| Theo's first Christmas |
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| Enjoying a wonderful Christmas Eve dinner |
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| Traditional Danish Christmas Dinner |
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| Traditional Christmas desert |
Once
the meal was finished then it was time to clean up. Fortunately for us, Maria’s parents have a
dishwasher and so the dishes were all piled into it for cleaning. It was then time for singing, and the next
thing we knew, was that we were all holding hands, singing Christmas carols and
dancing (or should I say waddling) around the Christmas tree… The vast, bushy fir tree that was not lit by
fairy lights like back home, but by real flickering candles. They sang in Danish, and Steve and I sang in
English… Besta sat in the chair and
watched us all.
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| Maria and her Mum Elsie lighting the candles on the Christmas Tree |
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| Maira with her Mum and sister.... |
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| Dancing around the Christmas Tree |
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| Mother and Son |
It was probably close
to 10pm by now, but we still had to open our Christmas presents… Maria’s mum had prepared a special tray of Danish
Christmas treats and lollies for us all to indulge in during the present
opening. Other than the sweets tray, this part of their Christmas is similar to
ours back home, except they do it Christmas Eve rather than Christmas morning like
back in Australia. It worked out well,
because our girls back in Australia were able to ring up on their Christmas morning
and wish us a very happy Christmas whilst we were opening presents and
celebrating Christmas Eve in Denmark.
Traditionally, one person goes out to the Christmas
tree and collects a present or two and distributes them to the rightful person
back in the lounge room.
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| Time to open the Christmas presents |
These presents are opened, and
everyone thanked before the next few presents are distributed. As you can imagine, this process took some
time, and it was midnight before we had all finished.
It was a wonderful evening, different
to the way we celebrate Christmas back home, but very special none the
less. We went to bed feeling very
blessed to have shared this wonderful day with our family on the other side of
the world.
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