@brittarnhild
GOD JUL / MERRY CHRISTMAS TO EVERYBODY
....Yes, I know it is early for my international
friends to say Merry Christmas today, but as you have
learned about Norwegian customs the past months this
is the most important thing to learn, Christmas is
December 24th here in Norway.
Shops are up till noon though, and it is not official
Christmas untill 5pm. From 5pm and for one hour every
church bell in our country is ringing, so as long as
you can hear, it is impossible to miss Christmas. Our
late Norwegian writer Alf Prøyssen has written a
children's story about the little village which forgot
about christmas, but luckily a small girl, with the
help of the sparrows, remembered in the last minute,
and also for this village the celebrations could start
on time.
Terje and I were super busy during the first part of
the day. There are always so many last minute
preparations, especially in the kitchen. We eat mutton
rib for Christmas dinner and these are to be boiled on
birch branches, so one of Terje's first tasks is to go
out in the garden to cut a suitable branch from one of
our birches. The meat is to boil for many hours, and
when the smell starts to find it's way through the
house it is really Christmas.
Also always alot of gift trading during the first part
of the day, mostly with neihgbours, and also my
brother with wife and kids came with their gifts. We
had coffee and cookies, and the kids had alot of fun
playing with our santa village, or actually santa farm
which we have put up. We have two kind of santas in
Norway, one is the one who comes from St. Nicolaus and
is very much like the American Santa, but we also have
small kind of goblins or gnomes who traditionally
lived at farms. Nobody ever saw them, but you always
had to take good care of them to get their help in
mastering the tasks on the farm. We set up a wooden
farm with dozens of nisser / goblins every year, and
also our gingerbread house is habitated with nisser.
Terje and I had put together the gingerbread house
last night, now it was the girls "duty" to decorate it
with suger icing and sweets. Marta especially loves
this, and now asks several times every day when it is
time to destroy and eat the house. And she will not
believe us when we tell her it will not happen untill
Christmas is over, which is in 20 days! Yes, that's
another thing you will have to learn about the
Norwegian celebartions, since Christmas doesn't start
untill the 24th, we have only just begun now, some
people celebrate for 13 days, some for 20. Of course
we make the most of it and make it last for 20 days.
At 4pm we all went to church for the traditional
Christmas service. Always very moving with the lights,
the carols, everybody dressed in their best clothes
and so on, and for us also very important to celebrate
the birth of Jesus, our saviour. The service lasts
about one hour and then the bells start ringing,
following us on our way home.
Dinner always takes a long time. As I already said we
have mutton ribs, but there are also several other
traditional dishes in Norway. For dessert we have
cloudberry cream (anybody heard of that?)We have
picked the cloudberries ourselves, and Terje and I
LOVE it, the kids are not too keen about it though,
but they are always so impatient to start opening the
gifts, they would not eat much dessert anyway.
Last night we were the six of us, Terje, I, Torgeir
21, Øystein 19, Ingrid 14 and Marta 7. I must confess
I spend much of the time nowadays to count my
blessings, I am so happy to have us all together, all
having a good and relaxed time.
What a joy it was to open the gifts. They were all
under the tree, and Marta picked one and one gift
reading the labels giving it to the right person. Then
we all took time to watch the gift being opened before
she picked another one. It took us two hours to open
them all. There will not be room here to mention all
my gifts, but let me just name a few very special
ones: I got my first Christopher Radco
ornament!!!!!!!(Kathy, if you read this I guess you
heard me shouting a thank you last night:-), I got an
old, miniature cotton mat from a friend in USA with
GOD JUL written in Norwegian (Donna, where did you
find it?????, I love it), we got the most beautiful
dinner plates and breakfast plates handpainted with
scenes from Provence (Marie Noëlle, we love these
plates so much, you have no idea!), I got the softest
knitted scarf (Gabi, you surprised me with this
one,lol) I got a Magi candle, one candle which divides
into three, and shall be lit on the Day of the Holy
Kings, I got several books (always my favorite
gifts).....and lots and lots more. All in all the most
perfect day for me. Ingrid really had her big day. On
top of her wishlist was a digital camera, but we had
told her as long as we have one in the family, that's
enough - I have had one for almost a year now. Mine is
quite expensive though and we won't let her borrow it
too much. She will be travelling alot next year, trips
abroad planned both with handball team, with choir,
with schoolclass and with us, so we bought her one for
herself. You should see her smile when she opened her
gift :-)
After the opening session it was time for coffee and
for telephone calls to our parents and siblings.
Another Norwegian tradition is to dance around the
Christmas tree singing carols and other Christmas
songs/dances. The boys are really not too enthusiastic
to do this anymore, but we pushed them a little,
begging them to do it for Marta (and for me)
Terje and I ended the day watching on television the
midnight mass from Rome with the Pope. I so much
admire the Pope. What a strong and erect man he is in
spite of his very weak healt. And what a wonderful way
to end our Christmas Eve in St.Peter's Cathedral in
Rome, remembering when we visited almost 2 years back,
and dreaming of next summer when we will go back to
Rome and our good friend's house in Terraccina.
Britt Arnhild
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