Advent wreath: The Danes’ Christmas begins with the Advent wreath. The wreath has four candles, each of which is lit every one of the four Sundays leading up to Christmas Eve the 24th of December. Adventus is Latin and means come and it is of course the count down to what comes at Christmas, namely the birth of Jesus, which in this way is celebrated in virtually all Danish homes.
Traditionally the Advent wreath is made out of fine spruce twigs and cuttings, often decorated with red berries and spruce cones, white candles and red ribbons for attaching the wreath to the ceiling. Every Sunday a new candel is lit together with the one(s) already lit the previous Sunday. This means that all four candles - each one obviously shorter than the other(s) - are burning all together on the forth Advent Sunday.
Nowadays you’ll find many inventive versions of the traditional wreath, using all kinds of material and decorated in more modern ways, including colored candles. That’s just fine but they can never replace the spruce original.
The calendar candle: Another December tradition is the calender candle. This candle is, just like a tape measure, provided with 24 markings, normally decorated with motives of fir and little pixies with red cheeks, wearing red hats and dancing merrily in yellow clogs. In most families the candles are lit every day from December 1st as a soothing factor in a hectic period, quite often at the breakfast table. Frequently it is the childrens’ duty to blow out the candle before it burns down too far into the next date!
Also in the beginning of December the windows are lit up with candles and light chains and decorated with all kinds of red flowers. The obligational out door Christmas tree is lit with hundreds of white lightbulbs. Very often even the odd tree in the garden is lit up with small lightbulbs. People with no garden do a great job of decorating their balcony or just their window frames and sills.
As December wears on all families dress up the interior of their houses with glass globes, festoons, paper hearts and stars, cornets, music boxes and a lot of family artifacts that somehow have survived the passing on from parents to kids for many decades. Small Christmas decorations are produced in the evenings around the dinnertable. The ingredients are cones, moss, lichen, leaves and berries of all sorts and held together by a lump of clay on a plate. As always, there has to be a candle in the middle to make the atmosphere complete.
All nursery schools, elementary schools, colleges, hospitals and institutions contribute to this national effort of making Christmas in Denmark both profound, warm and beautiful for every citizen.
At the Copenhagen town square in front of the city hall the worlds biggest Christmas tree is erected and decorated with thousands of light bulbs each year. In 1999 the tree, which as usual was cut in Gribskov outside Hillerød i Northen Zealand, measured no less than 35 metres and with a perfectly symmetrical shape.
The Christmas brew: The inner spirit is well taken care of by the famous Danish breweries, too. Each year in November Carlsberg and Tuborg release the new Christmas beer. This beer is both darker and stronger than the traditional lager and is presented in a festive manner along the lines of the new French red wine, Beaujolais Nouveau.
Christmas luncheons: The Christmas brew plays a major role in many of the traditional Danish luncheons that every single company with more than one employee carry out every year in December. Most hotels, inns and restaurants offer special Christmas dishes on their menus and every single canteen from Skagen in the far North of Denmark to Gedser in the far South is occupied with this very important question: -What are we going to have for our Christmas luncheon?
The answer is really quite simple: The traditional Danish kitchen offers a wide variety of cold and warm dishes which all belong to this famous ritual, normally offered at a buffet:
Salmon and herring prepared in different ways and with different dressings, shrimps, lobster and crab, filet of fried plaice with tartare sauce, fried sausage (medisterpølse) and meatballs (frikadeller) with red cabbage and beetroots, roast pork and bacon with fried apples, sirloin of pork with soft fried onions, black pudding with sirup, liverpâté with bacon and mushrooms, roasted duck, a variety of cold cuts, chicken- and fruit salad, various kinds of cheese with fruit and ris à l’amande (vanilla rice pudding with almonds and whipped cream) with cherrysauce. All the above is eaten with white and rye bread and butter and to go through it all demands both a strong physique and determination.
To make it all go down well you not only have the beer (or wine - or even sparkling water for the drivers) but also the Christmas snaps, which like the beer is presented every year before Christmas.
Present calendars: All Danish kids get one or more Advent calenders - or Christmas calenders as they are called in Denmark. The two big television channels each year produce a special new Christmas series divided into 24 episodes to keep the children's excitement in a high gear. The more fortunate children also get a gift calender consisting of 24 small presents, one for each day before Christmas, individually bought and wrapped by their parents.
Christmas cards: The world famous Danish Christmas Seals celebrate their 103 anniversary this year. That makes them the worlds oldest of their kind and it is probably only to be expected that the country which originally invented the postal system also created the Christmas seal.
Since its debut in 1904 the seals have been copied in many countries around the world. They are designed each year by specially invited artists. Among the most famous designers is the Danish Queen Margrethe II, who at many occasions has proved to posses extraordinary artistic skills.
The Christmas seals are used on letters and postcards, just like stamps, but they are not obligatory. They are sold only around Christmas time and the revenue is distributed to needy children.
It is not unusual for Danes to write a lot of Christmas cards to friends and family and most of them are provided with the Christmas seals. The cards are never printed in advance in the Hallmark fashion but handwritten like in the good old days. Traditional baking: As Christmas approaches all kinds of preparations accelerate in each and every Danish home. Remarkably, the old Scandinavian tradition has survived more og less untouched even in these modern times. Although, Christmas has been commercialized in Denmark like everywhere else all Danes - even young and hard core computer freaks - give in to their heritage at this particular time of the year. Everybody tries to participate in the preparation for Christmas Eve, however humble the effort.
The last two weeks before Christmas the great baking period begins and naturally the kids play a major role. Every family is busy baking their favourite cakes and cookies using traditional recipes hat have been handed over from generation to generation. Some of the most popular Danish Christmas cookies are: ginger cookies, deep fried crullers, vanilla biscuits or gingerbread shaped as hearts and decorated with ribbons.
While the oven is working overtime everyone is busy making Christmas decorations for the house or the tree and sweetmeats or candies out of marzipan, chocolate fudge, almonds, dates, hazelnuts and crystallized fruits and berries.
The Christmas tree: Traditionally the Danish Christmas tree is the common spruce type, some call it the Norwegian spruce. In the old days, before central heating, this was fine. All homes were cold and moist and therefore perfectly suited to maintain the green needles of the spruce.
Nowadays most people prefer the Normann spruce. It not only has softer needles, it also withstands the normal room temperature of modern homes much better. But beware: A true old fashioned Christmas enthusiast will scorn you for choosing anything but the common spruce. Even if it scatters needles all over your house and looks rather poorly at New Years Eve.
Families fortunate enough to live close to the woods try to pick and cut their own tree. Already when the fall sets in, the days shorten and the gales roam it’s time to choose the most beautiful tree of the forest. The ideal setting for any happy family is a weekend outing in mid December with daddy pulling the kids on the sledge with one hand, carrying the axe in the other, and mummy with the sandwiches and the thermo in the backpack - all on the lookout for that perfect tree. And you have to believe this: They always find it!
But of course, most Danes have to buy their Christmas tree just around the corner. During December you will find people - often boy scouts -selling Christmas trees on the streets all over the country collecting money for a good cause.
Decorating the Christmas tree: The lighting of the Christmas tree is considered as one of the highlights of Christmas Eve. Many Danes insist that you have to use real candles and not electric lights on the Christmas tree. Today, however, a lot of people have treacherously swapped the candles with the easier and much safer electric option. Electric lights don’t drip, they don’t make a mess and they don’t set the house on fire. But, surely, they are not quite able to create that traditional Christmassy atmosphere.
The Christmas tree itself is decorated with a silver or gold star on the top (never an angel), festoons of national flags, cornets with fruit, candies or cookies, small toy music instruments and the entire tree is often given the final touch with scatters of white fairy hair or strips of tin foil, reflecting the light from the glowing candles.
For the people who would like their Christmas tree to look more posh the company Georg Jensen, renowned for its Danish design, produces very elegant and exclusive Christmas decorations every year, appreciated by collectors and connoisseurs all over the world.
Previously it was the father in the family who was in charge of lighting the Christmas tree. After dinner he would go to the adjacent room on his own and light up the candles. Then he would invite the rest of the family to join him and admire the splendour of the tree. Today it is more common for the whole family actively to take part in all the traditional Christmas rituals.
The night before Christmas eve: The 23rd of December, the night before Christmas Eve, has a unique atmosphere, one of a kind. For most people this is the first day of the vacation, and many use the opportunity to see close friends and part of the familiy that they don’t have a chance of meeting for the next few days because of the Christmas obligations. Often they exchange small gifts and the children are served “æbleskiver” (a special kind of doughnuts) with icing sugar, jam or maple sirup while the adults enjoy a cup of hot glögg (mulled wine). On the menu is “risengrød” (rice pudding) with sugar, cinnamon and a lump of butter in the middle. On top of this is served “hvidtøl” (malt beer).
Christmas day and eve: In Denmark Christmas is celebrated on Christmas Eve the 24th of December.
Everybody is busy buying present and preparing dinner on the day of Christmas Eve and the children are extremely excited waiting with great anticipation for the evening to arrive.
In the old days it was common to give the animals a special treat on Christmas Eve.
It was widely believed that all animals could talk on this special night, and nobody would like the animals to speak ill of you. Today some families continue that tradition. They go for a walk in the garden, in the park or forest and bring along small goodies for the animals on this very special occasion.
A lot of people attend an early Christmas mass in church before the Christmas dinner not necessarily because they are devoted churchgoers, but because they enjoy the tradition of gathering in church and singing Danish Christmas carols as part of the Christmas spirit.
Dinner is served quite early. Most people eat roast duck on Christmas Eve but roast goose or roast pork with crackling rinds is also commonly served. The duck or goose is stuffed with apples and prunes and served with boiled and sweet potatoes, red cabbage and beets and cranberry jam. The dessert consists of ‘ris à l’amande’ (rice pudding with whipped cream, vanilla and almonds) with hot cherry sauce or ‘risengrød’ (hot rice pudding). A peeled almond is hidden in the dessert bowl and the lucky finder of the almond gets a present.
A good claret goes extremely well with this dinner, and maybe an old Port or Madeira with the dessert.
Dancing around the tree: After dinner the tree is lit, at last, and everyone joins hands with one another and dances around the tree singing traditional Danish Christmas hymns and carols.
When the children have had quite enough of the singing (and that doesn’t take very long) it is finally time for the unwrapping of gifts.
Normally, one of the children is chosen to select the wrapped presents under the tree and hand them over one at the time so everyone can watch each individual present being unwrapped.
After the last present, it is time for fresh fruit, cookies, candy and coffee.
On Christmas Day only the children get up early to enjoy their presents from the night before. This day is a very quiet time in most families as the more formal visits with luncheons and other activites normally don't begin until the 26th of December.
source:visitaarhus.com
