Soft Sand wrote:To: anyone who celebrates any holiday(s) this time of year
Happy holidays! :) Are you doing anything fun to celebrate? Any cool gifts you've given/received?
A little late, but I've been pretty busy with the holidays!
I usually have 3 days of Christmas events. 24 and 26 with my mom's side and 25 with my dad's side. Though this year was kinda weird so I did 25 with mom's and 26 with dad's, so I'll talk about how it went this year.
on the 24 it's basically Christmas day at my grandparents (great uncle/aunt actually, my grandpa and two of his sisters plus their husbands are all neighbors) and we eat a big feast, pop Christmas crackers, dessert/play the almond game (we have a big bowl of rice pudding and an almond is stirred in, whoever gets it wins a prize, unfortunately it was lost this year), we then sing Christmas carols with my great aunt on piano (most are in English but we sing a few in Danish like 'Deglig er den himmel blå' and I don't speak a word of Danish) and we finish the night with opening presents.
On the 25 me and my parents start the day by having our household Christmas, mostly gifts between the 3 of us and some smaller gifts from my dad's side of the family. After that we go back out to my grandparents (the other great aunt/uncle) and have a smorgasbord (or smorg as we call it). We start with the sild (pickled herring served on thinly sliced buttered rye bread and curried mustard), then leverpostej (liver pate served on thinly sliced buttered rye bread with pickled beats) sided with deviled eggs, oysters/muscles and crab salad, then there's an assorted meat platter before we start dessert which is the same rice pudding topped with cherry sauce as the night before but no almond this time and we finish off with a cheese platter. After the smorg we play 'pottery lottery', my grandpa does pottery as a hobby and has all sorts of beautiful bowls and plates he made. We pass a box with 2 dice around and if someone rolls doubles they get to take a piece of pottery, we then have a timed round once everything is taken where we get to steal from others. This year I got an awesome plate and a fruit bowl, both black (my favorite color).
Finally on the 26 we had my dad's side over at my parents house for a dinner at dessert, it was mostly unscheduled with just talking and eating but nothing wrong with that. If I were to have gone out to my mom's side there would have been broom ball (which I don't play because I'm not athletic and it's cold) then just talking and a big dinner like on the 24th. Boxing day is far more relaxed.
Interesting gifts this year, while I got lots of things I like none of them would be particularly interesting to hear about (Stuff like a lamp or socks) but I did get one thing that was very special. My grandmother on my mom's side passed away this year and she usually did a lot of the cooking for holiday events, she made the sild, leverpostej and rice pudding so this other members of the family had to take over. Everyone in the family got a custom made book stylized like her favorite cookbook and filled with her and some other family recipes as well as a few family photos (there's a picture of my and my 4 cousins who all look nice but then I'm on the end looking like Sloth from the Goonies). It's about 100 pages long and some of the highlights are rice pudding and cherry sauce, my grandma's favorite layered lemon dessert, pickled beats, pickled herring and instructions on how to make heart baskets and paper stars (Christmas decorations), there's also a recipe for window cleaner handwritten on the conversion table which cracked me up.
