Although friends have gone home and many exciting things have happened over the holidays, I feel like I need to fill you in on the Christmas celebrations I witnessed and experienced in Copenhagen.

Did I mention that the Danish Christmas beer comes out on November 1? I was still mourning Halloween. Anyways, I think it can be argued that Danes start getting ready for Christmas around this time. I mean, what’s holding you back if there is no Thanksgiving! Oh wait, I just realized I never wrote about Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving was quite hectic considering we didn’t get any time off and finals work was beginning. At first the studying aspect of the experience was a breeze, but the month of traveling taken out of the semester really leaves no room for spread out deadlines. Although the Americans in my Kollegium and our two Danish RAs (about 16 of us) came together to prepare dinner, I had a paper to write that night and school the next day. I will never take for granted my post-feast nap and Thanksgiving break.

Okay, back to Christmas time in Copenhagen. Although I did not spend Christmas in Copenhagen, the months leading up to it were interesting. I may have to steal some of the Christmas traditions for years to come! I learned a lot about Christmas tradition at a Christmas cookie gathering and Julefrokost. 

One of my teachers had us over for cookies and Glögg, the Scandinavian term for mulled wine. The main ingredients of Glögg are red wine, sugar, and spices such as cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, cloves, and bitter orange. Most of the times it is topped with chopped almonds and raisins. Obviously most Danes add hard liquor to it. In Denmark it is traditionally combined with aebleskiver, which are like spherical pancakes, meant to be dipped in strawberry jam and powdered sugar. MMMmmm. Although they are called “apple slices” over time apple bits have been left out of the recipe. I’m on a mission to make them with apple bits because that obviously would taste amazing.

Julefrokost is traditionally a family Christmas lunch on Christmas Day, but many workplaces and organizations will have their own julefrokost throughout December. It’s usually on the weekend because it consists of eating and drinking all day and some Danes attend multiple throughout the Christmas season. The meal consists of smørrebrød (Danish open-faced sandwiches on rye bread) accompanied by schnapps, of course. Many DIS students got to experience a julefrokost to some extent as Danish visiting families and RAs planned events for their students.

My visiting mom, Mette, planned a julefrokost for the students she is in contact with. She taught us how to properly eat smørrebrød and we also had a traditional Christmas dessert, risalamande. Risalamande is a rice pudding with vanilla flavoring and chopped almonds. It is usually served with a hot or cold cherry sauce. MMMMMmmm. It is also tradition to hide a whole almond in within the bowl and whoever finds it gets a present! I didn’t win, but that’s okay because it was delicious. Mette and other Danish students reminisced on memories of adults and children being very competitive about finding the almond!

We also did a white elephant gift exchange which I always thought was just a game of simple gifts being passed around and stolen and so on. The version we played was definitely more cruel and stealthy. Maybe my memories have been skewed by an American childhood of always making everyone feel special. I believe the game is definitely played differently because we rolled dice and every time you rolled a six, you got to pick a wrapped gift and this continued until the gifts were gone. The next round is for stealing gifts every time you roll a six and it can last for as long as the timekeeper wants and the time is unknown to the participants. The best part of the game is the fact that most of the gifts are crap and you can also be left without a gift at all! In reality, you could be fighting over a box of salt! However, there are usually a few good gifts such as nice chocolate etc. but when you finally unwrap your gifts, you are often shocked.