Christmas Eve is the main day of celebrating Christmas here in Norway. I remember when I was a child this was always such a very long day, with waiting, waiting and waiting. My strongest memory is from the year I was around 12. I was the first one up early in the morning, and when I came out in our diningroom, which was right outside my bedroom, my parents had set up a huge trainset, complete with village, mountains and everything. A wonderful surprise for me and my brothers.
Traditionally the Christmas tree should be decorated the night before Christmas Eve by the parents in the family, and the children were not allowed to see it untill Christmas Eve. Nowadays it is more common to decorate it together with the children on "lille julaften" (Little Christmas Eve) as we call the day before Christmas Eve. Our gifts found their way under out tree last night, and after we had enjoyed our "lutefisk" meal with my parents (sorry, I was too busy preparing the food and serving, so not even one photo were taken) Marta had a long time lying on the floor looking at all the wrapped gifts. Oh, wonderful excitement of a child's Christmas. Ingrid is 16 now, and already see that she is growing and with that missing some of the child excitement.
Our kids watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban untill after 11pm last night, so luckily Marta slept quite long this morning. And as soon as her big brother Øystein is up from bed, he will take her out cross country skiing. He is almost 22 now, but remembers everything about long waiting Christmas Eves :-). At 1.30pm we will eat rice porridge for traditional Christmas Eve lunch. There will be one single almond hidden in the porridge, and the one who finds it will be given a gift, a marzipan pig :-) At 4pm we'll go to the local church for a Christmas Carol, and then home to eat the huge, traditional Christmas dinner - salted and dried rib of mutton. The best meal of the year :-) The mutton is damped on birch sticks which Terje finds in the garden, and eated with potatoes, carrots and swede. For dessert we have tradidionally had a cloudberry cream, but as the kids don't fancy that, we will this year make a rice porride cream (another trad. Norwegian dessert) with strawberries. After dinner it is time for the opening of gifts, which always takes a long time of course, and then the night goes on with phonecalls to all our close family, walking around the Christmas tree singing all the traditional Christmas carols, coffee and ALL the different Christmas cookies which have been baked the last weeks, a board game or two, starting to read the newest books, listening to the newest tapes and so on. At 11pm I and Terje go downtown to the midnight mass in the Nidaros Cathedral. This year there will also be a special concert on Norwegian television from the Cathedral, the American St.Olavs Choir, and the Girl's Choir of the Cathedral will take part. This concert was broadcasted on one of the big American televisions a few days ago, many of my American friends saw it I know. I will tape it and see it later during Christmas.
HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL OF YOU, FROM OUR HOME HERE IN TRONDHEIM.
