Childhood Christmases

[davewitley]

This is a description - in some respects, edited highlights - of 
Christmas the way my family did it when I was a child.  Some of the 
elements we retain in my own family.

Advent

In my childhood, we always celebrated Advent the Danish way: a 
wreath of spruce (fir? pine?) branches, decorated with cones, 
berries etc.  There were four candles, and the first one was lit on 
the first Sunday, and lit for a while every day until the second 
Sunday, when two candles would be lit, and so on.  From the fourth 
Sunday until Christmas Eve, all four would be lit, and the lit 
wreath would be part of the general decorations on Christmas Eve.

As for calendars, not usually with chocolate in.  However, when I 
was about 6 (one of my first Christmases in England anyway), my 
grandfather painstakingly decorated 23 small and one large 
matchboxes, by pasting wrapping paper and coloured paper shapes onto 
them, filled them with various small sweets, and then wrapped them 
individually in more wrapping paper (each one a different colour and 
pattern) with the numbers from 1 to 24 stuck on, tied up with gold 
thread, and hung them all on a long piece of ribbon, and sent them 
to us, for my mother to hang between two hooks on the wall.  Then, 
of course, we opened one box on each day.  The wrapping paper was 
all kept, and this 'calendar' re-used, by popular acclaim, for years 
and years until my brother and I grew up.  Amazingly, as far as I 
can recall, the same original paper was used all that time.  For 
many years into adulthood, I associated dates in December with 
specific colours, because of that wrapping paper.  After the first 
year, my mother provided the sweets, and kept Solomonic judgement 
over who got what, as well as who got to unwrap and who got to open 
the box.

We also had a lovely German Advent calendar, which got re-used for 
many years.  This was a strange but entirely convincing (to a child) 
conflation of the ancient world of the nativity and vaguely 
eighteenth century Germany (the calendar itself was modern, vintage 
about 1960).  It depicted a walled town, covered in snow, and on the 
1st you opened a milepost which discovered the town to be Bethlehem, 
Judea.  Successive dates disclosed such things as a lit advent 
wreath in a window, a stall selling geese, a yard full of Christmas 
trees (I loved the fact that you could see the tops of the trees 
poking over the wall, so that, when you opened the door the trees 
inside lined up with their tops 'outside': to this day, I don't 
reckon an Advent calendar is worthy of the name unless what is 
behind the doors is consistent in this way with the picture on the 
front; this calendar had the *backs* of the doors realistically 
illustrated), and, on the 6th, St Nicholas walking through one of 
the main gates.  As the Day approached, the pictures homed in on the 
Christmas story, with the Three Kings turning up through another 
gate on the 18th, and some shepherds pitching up some time after 
that.  This, interleaved with a big church service taking up the 
17th, 19th (high windows into the choir) and 22nd (west doors).  
Centre of the whole picture, of course was the stable, with the 
nativity scene behind the doors.  I think if I were to sit down 
carefully and think, I could remember what nearly every door was, 
even now.

The whole thing was done with loving attention to detail, and yet 
involved no special theme or anything unusual in an Advent calendar, 
yet it seems beyond the reach of craft or commerce today to produce 
anything like.  I'm fairly certain my parents never threw it away, 
but we can't find it now.  A metaphor for childhood, if ever there 
was one.

We did have a new calendar every year, but it was never as good.

We followed the 'progressive decoration' approach mentioned by Mary 
and Eloise, though I think more on a weekend by weekend basis than 
daily.  Stages included (I can't swear as to the order, or as to its 
consistency from one year to another) getting out the Danish room 
decorations (cardboard nisser* to be pinned to the walls or hung by 
thread from the lights), setting up the nisse landscape (cotton wool 
snow and red two-inch tall pipe-cleaner nisser with sledges, skis, 
pots of rice pudding), making and putting up paper chains, making 
our own decorations (Japanese lanterns, Danish heart decorations, 
cutting out folded paper patterns).  On Christmas Eve, my father 
would set up a nativity scene of carved wooden figures (again 
German; we lived there for three years when I was small).  Topics 
too numerous to mention include the making and filling of 
krammehuser, the decoration of the Christmas table, the visit of the 
Salvation Army brass band, the date candle, and the making of 
peppermint pastilles.

Christmas Tree

As Christian mentioned, always a real tree, though these days not 
necessarily spruce in the UK as the industry has discovered trees 
with better needle-holding ability.  What he didn't mention is that 
the trees are covered with real candles (as well as decorations, and 
baskets and krammehuser full of sweets).

The tree was decorated on Christmas Eve, and, as people have said, 
the old tradition (which I believe was imposed on my mother) was 
that the children would be packed of to their rooms, or out, while 
the tree was decorated and presents laid under it, so that the first 
the children would see was the fully decorated, lit, present-
carpeted tree near to the table laid with the Christmas dinner, on 
the evening of Christmas Eve.  I suspect that, for my grandfather, 
that moment was the high point of the year, for which the rest of 
the year functioned as a kind of decorative display case.

We didn't quite go the whole hog on this.  Once we were old enough, 
we helped decorate the tree on the morning of Christmas Eve.  We'd 
all help bring presents down later on, just before the dinner.  The 
tree would come down January 7th.

Christmas

Christmas proper would start at 3pm with the festival of nine 
lessons and carols on the radio from Kings College.  Accompanied by 
tea and posh biscuits (eg Bahlsen Choco Leibnitz).  Then a funny 
period where we'd bring the presents down, finish off any odd jobs 
('for the last time, will you tidy your room'!) and generally wait 
around while my mother did the honours with the goose.  After 
setting the table, my father would dig out a bottle of some obscure 
spirit such as framboise, and when we boys were older we'd get to 
try it.

Dinner would be goose, with plentiful trimmings, followed by (I 
think) ice cream when we were small, later ris a la mande, which was 
a nod to the traditional Danish Christmas dinner, in which rice 
pudding is the starter, followed by goose, followed by aebleskiver 
(a sort of apple tart).  Red wine for the main course, sweet sherry 
for the dessert.  The tree would be lit just before dinner.  Usually 
the candles would burn themselves out by the end of the evening.

Ris a la mande is sweet rice pudding, cooled, mixed with whipped 
cream, flavoured with vanilla.  Despite that description, it's 
delicious.  A single almond was added, and the person who got the 
almond in their portion got a small gift, the almond present.

After dinner, singing carols round the tree.  Even Danes recognise 
that there is a spiritual element to Christmas, or rather, that 
while spirituality is 99% food, drink, and having a good time with 
your family, the other 1% does need attending to.  Danish carols 
themselves tend to be short on baby Jesus and long on eating, 
drinking, and having a good time with your family, but we mostly 
sang English as we kids didn't have that much Danish.

Then, presents.  We had a sort of halfway house: different presents 
would be opened simultaneously, but everyone would be expected to 
acknowledge what everyone else was getting.  We were also halfway 
between England and Denmark: presents from each other and Danish 
relatives were opened Christmas Eve (as is Danish custom); presents 
from English relatives were opened Christmas morning, by our beds.

Christmas lunch: the great cold table (det store kolde bord, more 
commonly known in English-speaking countries by its Swedish name, 
the smorgasbord).  All sorts: pickled raw herring, cold goose, 
stuffed gooseneck, rillettes, gravad laks, various other meats and 
pates, lots of cheeses, all washed down for the adults with beer and 
snaps.  Goose dripping is a delicious alternative to butter for 
meats (but *not* fish) eaten on rye bread - in fact wholemeal bread 
spread with goose dripping and a pinch of salt is a delight in 
itself.

For many years we had Christmas cake, which generally lasted until 
about the end of January.

The tree would be lit again, certainly on New Year's Eve and Twelfth 
Night (6th Jan), sometimes on other evenings, e.g. if we had 
visitors.  Twelfth Night we'd let the candles burn down: when the 
last candle went out that was the end of Christmas.

David

*Nisser are small gnomelike creatures with red hats and striped 
jerseys associated with Christmas and, loosely, with Father 
Christmas (Julemanden) in Denmark.  Like Danes, they eat a lot, 
particularly rice pudding.