White Christmas??

So did we have a White Christmas? Unfortunately not. We got some snow Boxing Day and right now it’s snowing again, but Christmas Eve and Christmas Day it was no sign of the white stuff. One of my Christmas gifts was this sweater dress I got from my man. I absolutely love it, must admit I found it myself, so I was not very surprised when opening the gift. The dress is from Urban Boheme, and goes with many of my scarves, jeans, trousers and boots. A true capsule piece for me.

I promised to tell a bit about Norwegian Christmas traditions, and I’ll keep my promise even if Christmas is over.

The main difference is that we celebrate Christmas Eve. For us it’s the most important day, it’s when we have our Christmas dinner and when we open the gifts. So how is Norwegian Christmas Eve? Well in the morning and during the day we watch a lot of TV, we watch the same films as we watched last year and 10 -20 years ago. We watch Disney Christmas cavalcade, we watch an old Tcheck film about Cinderella and we are convinced if we don’t watch this film it’s not Christmas.

And while our Christmas meal is cooking we enjoy our TV traditions while the smell of Christmas is spreading all over the house. For me the smell of Christmas is the smell of Pinnekjøtt. Pinnekjøtt is most common to eat in the west part of Norway, other places tradition can be pork rib or fresh cod. So what is Pinnekjøtt? It’s lambs rib, salted and dried, sometimes also smoked (which is what we prefer). In the evening the 23rd of December we have to put the ribs in water, this is crucial if you forget you have no Christmas dinner. On Christmas Eve we steam cook the ribs for many hours, it’s ready when the meat almost fall off the ribs. It’s served with mashed suede and boiled potatoes. We normally eat this dish a couple of times a year, it’s to yummy to only eat once. It might be we eat it on a Christmas party or also sometimes on New Year’s Eve.

Dessert is often Rice cream or cream with cloud berries. Other food traditions is to eat rice pudding for lunch Christmas Eve, we put an almond in the pudding and the one who find the almond gets a price, the price is often a marzipan pig. Lefse is also part of Christmas tradition for many Norwegians. It’s made in many different ways, here’s a receipt in English. Lefse

After dinner it’s time to open the gifts, our tradition is that we open one at the time. Everyone sees what everyone is getting. It took a couple of hours this year as we were 11 people and a ton of gifts.

Christmas Day and Boxing Day we normally also spend with family, in Norway all shops are closed both Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

Now this year is soon has come to an end, it has been a exiting year in many ways. This year gave me two grandchildren, double happiness.

Until next time

Kari