Wednesday, December 24, 2008

A Swedish Christmas

Christmas in Sweden is celebrated on Christmas eve actually. It started a bit early for us since if I remember right ... the kids woke up semi-early today. I think it was about 7am that we all got up so we had plenty of time to get ready to go to Farmor's house by 12pm. It is tradition to have Christmas porridge at noon and then watching Donald Duck Christmas program on TV at 3pm and then open presents after. I don't know how kids in Sweden last that long but I guess they don't know any better so they do. ;)

Did I mention it snowed today!? It is an ever so slight dusting of snow but hey it is SNOW!! We can officially say it is a white Christmas here in Sweden!!

Of course, when Davin woke up he wanted to know if Santa came with gifts. I made him wait until 9am to call Farmor who was the only one awake. She confirmed to Davin that Santa had come so he was all excited to go and see what he brought. He also liked Farmor's house because it had a Christmas tree. We actually arrived around 11am and were definitely hungry by the time we arrived since it had been a while since we ate breakfast. Davin got to open one Santa present to hold him over until 4pm. Davin got a remote control car and Ebbe also got a remote control car too! The kids had fun playing and then we ate our porridge around 12 or 12:30pm. It is a strange thing to eat really ... milk and rice porridge that you add sugar and cinnamon to flavor it. I think there was also crispbread and other items like beet salad and caviar to put on it. More weird stuff. ;)

After lunch we had a few hours to kill before Disney comes on at 3pm. A bunch of people decided to go outside for a walk ... Ebbe, Cattis, Patrik, Erik and Anna. Davin didn't really want to go outside in the cold but when he saw everyone getting ready he wanted to go too. They were going to feed the birds along the lake and then to the playground for the kids to play. I heard later that they had a LOT of fun and poor Davin's hands got really cold and wet since he wasn't wearing proper snowball playing mittens. Still, he made other people create snowballs for him and then he had a blast throwing them at people. What fun! I am so glad I stayed inside. ;)

At 3pm Disney came on and everyone gathered around the TV to watch. It is a long standing tradition in Sweden and EVERYONE participates. It's really fun since they show some classic Disney cartoons which I haven't seen in a long time. The weird thing for me is listening to Cinderella and Lady and the Tramp in Swedish! We also saw a clip from the new movie Bolt too and then it was over. Time to open our 1000's of presents!

Davin helped me be Santa and hand out all the presents between opening his own. Ebbe slept through half of it so then it was fun to watch Ebbe open his without Davin getting too jealous. It seemed to take forever but it also could be that we were all starving too. Dinner was Swedish meatballs that were all handmade so they took a bit longer. Also there were many different recipes that we had to create ... no milk and egg one for Davin ... vegetarian ones for Cattis and Erik .... and regular ones for everyone else. YUM! Then we packed up our gifts, visited for a bit and then headed home. ZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz

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