We've Got The County Covered
We've Got The County Covered
My last shot at giving you a shot of Danish Christmas. I hope you have enjoyed yourselves with my not so formal introduction to our culture during the holidays.
It has not been structured and thus this last piece is bits and scraps left over from the other articles.
During the holy day month Danes – to a varying degree – get ready for Christmas. A lot of the getting ready has to do with not too healthy food.
I know how many Montanans love pancakes. We do pancakes. Imagine if your pancake was round – like a tennis ball. We have a special pan for that sort of pancake, we call them Æbleskiver (Aebleskiver), it literally means apple-slices. When they were invented, people did put a piece of apple in the middle while baking them. It was a way to make the dough last longer. Dough was expensive and apples most people had in their own garden. I am not going to give you the recipe here because you can google it. The thing about æbleskiver is that it create a situation of hygge. We dip them in powder sugar or jam, preferably strawberry jam. Nowadays we buy them at the store.
I remember when I visited my wife's host family in 1994. Peggy, my wife's American mum, would bake a cake and she pulled out a box and added milk or water and that was that. We laughed about that way of making a home baked cake, we had never seen a cake come out of a box. Peggy and her sister Marilyn have visited us twice in Denmark since, and both times we have pulled out a box and baked a cake. Then it was their turn to laugh. Laughing with friends and family is really hygge.
We also make Pebernødder (Peppernuts), small round cookies. They are just put out as snacks during December. You can also look up that recipe. They are yummy as well. Some families even make small cornets in paper, fill them with peppernuts and hang them on their Christmas tree.
One thing that we do in our family which is not typical Danish, is our tradition of hanging up a branch appx. three feet long from the ceiling. The branch comes from a shrub named corylus avellana 'Contorta', it is a sort of hazel. On there we hang keychains which we or friends or family have bought when we travel. We have golden elephants from Thailand, a small sandal from Uganda, a wooden mask from Indonesia, a stop sign saying beware of moose from Sweden, a small troll from Norway and from Montana a wooden carving of a grizzly. We have put red ribbons on all of them. They don't really have anything to do with Christmas. But to us Christmas also is a symbol of remembering friends from around the world and being thankful for the journeys we have taken.
When it comes to music during the holidays, we are very influenced but English and American culture. We listen to "All I Want for Christmas" by Mariah Carey and " Last Christmas" by Wham. We have classics of our own though. One with two mice that fall into a bucket of milk and the whole song is about the mice swimming until the milk turns into butter and the mice climb out. Another is called "We are on our way to you Santa Claus", sung by a duckling, a chick and a big teddy bear. It is from one of our most loved children calendar classics.
My favorite Christmas-song however is American, Chris Reas "Driving home for Christmas". Why? Because it makes me happy about going home the last day of work before Christmas. I am Chris, just sitting there in traffic waiting to get home looking forward to hygge with family and friends.
Ones Christmas Eve is over we start on our Christmas lunches. They are with family and/or friends. Again a loft of traditional Danish food is on the table. Frikadeller – look it up - and herring fried and placed in vinegar, herring in curry sause, and herring in all kinds of other sauces. At the table there is also snaps/aquavit. Strong spirited liquor. Don't drink too much of that.
Merry Christmas or Glædelig Jul as we say in Denmark.
