Vi elsker jul!
If you’ve ever been so lucky to have a Dane in your life, you know that we love Christmas. Perhaps it’s because it gets so dark in Scandinavia in the wintertime and we need something to cheer us up. Whatever the reason, we have about a million traditions to get ourselves in the festive holiday mood. When our family moved from Denmark to Greece and eventually the US, we always enjoyed telling our non-Danish friends about some of our strange Christmas traditions. We would, of course, get them involved as much as possible. Our neighbors who have attended many a December Danish cookie baking session can attest to that! And we must say, anyone who has been a guest at our Christmas celebrations has always wanted to come back, so that tells you everything you need to know!
Today’s Post
For today’s post, I wanted to gather all of our Christmas traditions in one place. This is certainly a challenge, and there is a chance that I have left something out. As I said before, we do not take Christmas lightly and there are many many traditions to remember! Hopefully, I can take you through December somewhat chronologically and give you a small explanation of each tradition. If you want to incorporate anything into your own Christmas this year, feel free. All we want to do is spread as much Christmas joy and cheer as we can!
The Early December Traditions
Early December is filled with preparations for the rest of the month. But, there are a few other traditions that I will introduce below. Like I said, we Danes love to start our festivities early, so things like Christmas shopping and listening to Christmas music we may already have started in November 😂
Stockings and Nisser
Many families all around the world hang up stockings as a part of their Christmas decorations. On Christmas Day, these stockings will be filled with goodies if you have been good that year. If you have been naughty, you’ll get coal! In Denmark, though, this begins much earlier. We hang up our stockings before December 1 because we get small gifts in them every day of December. This is a tradition that is mainly for children, of course, and we can clearly remember being so excited to wake up every day of December to see what was in our stocking!
But these gifts didn’t come from our parents. No, our stockings in Denmark are filled by a “nisse,” which is a small gnome-like creature that comes from Nordic folklore. Every family has their own “nisse” who lives in the attic, and you have to make sure to feed him on December 23rd! But I’ll get to that tradition later on 😉
Decorations
Another part of early Christmas preparations is putting up decorations. This varies depending on your family. Some may want to put up a Christmas tree already, but we tend to do so later in December. In the early days, we just put up other decorations and possibly make some homemade ones to decorate with as well. A classic Danish decoration to put up at Christmastime is “kravlenisser,” or crawling nisser. These are cute little cardboard nisser (which I explained above) with different outfits and facial expressions that you clip onto picture frames or bookshelves in your house to make them look like they are crawling around. We also love to make our own stars, braided from paper strips called “stjernestrimler” or star strips, and braided hearts. You can usually purchase materials to make these online!
Candles
Another tradition that you must begin in early December is the lighting of your kalenderlys (calendar candle) and advent candles. The latter is quite straightforward, as this is a tradition tied to Christianity and counts down the four Sundays before Christmas. Usually, you have an advent candle holder that has space for four candles, and you light an additional one with each Sunday that passes. A kalenderlys is another type of advent candle sort of like an advent calendar. It has all dates in December up to Christmas listed on it, starting with 1 at the top and ending with 24. You light it every day and try to burn it exactly down to the next date. Children are usually tasked with the responsibility of keeping an eye on it and blowing it out when it has finished for the day!
The Mid-December Traditions
Mid-December traditions start to become a bit more food-related, as we get closer and closer to Christmas. We also continue to keep up with our decorations, advent calendars, and candles, as these are continuous traditions throughout the month.
Julefrokost
Julefrokost is a big Danish Christmas lunch, and they happen throughout December. Most workplaces will have a julefrokost, which is similar to a Christmas party in the UK or the US. Basically, it involves a lot of food and a lot of alcohol! Part of the traditional food involved is smørrebrød, or Danish open-faced sandwiches, which you can read more about in this blog post. With our food, we drink beer throughout the meal, but also do shots of snaps (akvavit). Many songs are sung, toasts are made, and people tend to make a drunken fool of themselves too 😂 We always host a julefrokost in our family, but we tend to do it after Christmas when everybody is still gathered in one place!
Æbleskiver and Gløgg
Mid-December also means lots of small Christmas gatherings with friends and family, or even with classmates or other social groups. At many of these gatherings, treats are served! A favorite Christmas-time treat is gløgg, or mulled wine. Since the winter is quite cold in Denmark, this is a hearty and warming drink that brings lots of festive cheer to a big group of people. We have recipes for both red wine gløgg and white wine gløgg here. Both can be made non-alcoholic as well! This is often served alongside æbleskiver, or what we can best call “pancake puffs” in English. These are cooked in a really fun skillet with deep holes, and you have to rotate the batter so that they turn into spheres. Eat them with powdered sugar and jam and it is just the most delicious Christmastime treat ever! Find our recipe here.
Christmas Cookies
In the middle of December we also like to start baking Christmas cookies. There are many different kinds of traditional Danish Christmas cookies, and you can find the ranking of our favorites in this blog post here. We will also be posting plenty throughout the month on our Instagram and TikTok, so give us a follow over on @skandibaking! It can be really fun to gather a group of people together and make big batches of cookies all together, and this may also be a time to serve gløgg and æbleskiver! The cookies will last in tins for several weeks, so definitely make them earlier in December if you can.
The Late December Traditions
Now we have reached late December, or, simply put, Christmas! This is the most exciting time of year, as we get closer and closer to the big celebrations of the 23rd and 24th!
December 23: Lillejuleaften
December 23rd is called “Little Christmas Eve” in Danish, which means the day before Christmas Eve. On this day, our family typically get our Christmas tree (very late, I know) and decorate it. We then make rice porridge for dinner, as this is traditional. It’s very easy to make and you can find our recipe here! We top it with a small amount of butter and cinnamon sugar and it’s delicious, hearty, and warming. Then, it’s time to feed the “nisse” in preparation for the next day, as he needs energy to deliver your presents! Just leave a bowl of risengrød and a beer in the attic for him, and he’ll definitely give you what you deserve the next day.
December 24: Juleaften
The next day is Christmas Eve, which is when Scandinavians celebrate Christmas. We spend the day wrapping gifts and cooking in preparation for our big dinner. Typically, we will have a big pork roast, roast duck with prunes and apples (recipe here), boiled potatoes, caramelized potatoes, pickled red cabbage, and plenty of gravy. Dessert is a fun little competition, as we eat a sweet rice pudding (risalamande) with chopped almonds in it and warm cherry sauce on top. However, there is one whole almond hidden in there, and whoever finds it wins the almond gift (mandelgave). This is usually a board game or something general that anyone will appreciate as a gift!
After dinner, we tidy up, and then it’s time to sing. We hold hands around the tree and sing lots of Christmas carols (both in Danish and in English in our house!). This sounds strange, but it’s actually really fun, especially when your entire family is awful at singing 😂 Finally, we give each other gifts one by one, usually opening them until late into the night. We also eat plenty of cookies, snacks, and sweets as we are hanging out together over the course of the evening.
Thanks for Reading!
Then, all of the sudden, Christmas is over and we have to wait a whole year to do it again! We hope you enjoyed reading today’s post all about Danish Christmas traditions. I loved writing it! We are very proud of our strange but very festive holiday traditions, so we hope you learned something new that you might want to incorporate into your celebrations this year. And feel free to leave us a comment below with any questions or anything you want to say!
