Childhood Christmases

[pengolodh_sc]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter, "davewitley" wrote:
> 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.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/christmasinternational would love 
seeing this tale, I have no doubt.

> Advent
[snip]
> 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.  
[snip]

That seems to be a common trend in Advent- and Christmas-decorations -
 they grow bigger and more magnificent in some ways each year, yet at 
the same time, they are tacky, and somehow fail to grasp the delicacy 
required.

> 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).
[snip]

We tend to use not the common spruce found in the wild, but various 
special breeds, which have been refined with crossbreeding.  A large 
amount of Norwegian Christmas-trees are in fact imported from Danish 
Christmas-tree farms.  

While some may still use live candles on Christmas-trees in Norway, 
the vast majority has gone over to electric lights, though they are 
shaped to resemble candles.  The risk of fire is simply too great for 
most people's peace of mind.  Mind, we still have the Christmas-tree 
candle-holders from my grandmother on my mother's side.

Incidentally, this years Christmas-tree for Trafalgar Square in 
London - this being 57th year Oslo gifts a tree to London - was 
shipped from Oslo a couple of days ago; it is to be lit December 
4th.  It was shipped with DFDS Tor Line, which transports the tree 
without charging money for it.  The tree is the annual token of 
thanksgiving from the citizens of Oslo to the citizens of Britain in 
general and London in particular, as a way of saying thanks for the 
support and friendship shown us during the war.

> 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).  
[snip]

Last year I acquired a recording of the Festival of Nine Lessons and 
Carols - it is a very beautiful service, and if I manage it, I will 
try to catch it on BBC this year - I believe BBC transmits it at 
midnight on Christmas Eve?  In Norway, Christmas begins with bells 
tolling at 5pm, and at the same time the boys-choir "NRKs Guttekor 
Sølvguttene" sing Christmas carols in radio and on TV.  The choir 
stems from two choirs - Sølvguttene (= "The silverboys") and the 
Boys' Choir of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation NRK, formed in 
1940 and 1947 respectively, and headed by the same man - Torstein 
Grythe.  In the 60s they were merged to form the present choir, and 
Grythe remained its primary conductor until last year - and still is 
the manager and assistant conductor of the choir today, 63 years 
after the founding - this actually has earned him a place in the 
Guinness Book of World Records.

> 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.
[snip]

I think this is what we call riskrem in Norway, the traditional 
dessert for Christmas-eve dinner, served with sweet red sauce based 
on fruit-extracts.  It is simply too rich for me, though my parents 
love it.  

Christmas-dinner in Norway falls into several categories, depending 
on regional and family traditions.  My family holds to baked rib with 
medister-food (sausages and meatballs/meatpatties made from a blend 
of minced pork and minced beef), served with potatoes, vegetables, 
and thin, dark gravy.  

Common alternatives are fresh cod with Sandefjord-butter (a special 
form of butter-based suace), particularly popular on the southern 
coastline; and pinnekjøtt (literal translation is stick-meat), which 
is individual ribs of mutton boiled with sticks of birch that lend a 
special flavour, and served with potatoes and mashed and creamed 
Swedes.  Some areas have a tradition for serving head of codfish as 
Christmas-dinner, but that is rather uncommon.  Goose is ahrdly seen 
at all, while turkey in the recent decade has gained popularity as 
New Year's Eve dinner.

> Christmas lunch: the great cold table (det store kolde bord, more 
> commonly known in English-speaking countries by its Swedish name, 
> the smorgasbord).
[snip]

Sounds very much like Christmas-lunch on Christmas Day for most 
Norwegian families, apart from goose, which is very uncommon in 
Norway.

For 2nd Day the menu is dictated by what was served on Christmas 
Eve.  If Christmas Eve saw meat, 2nd Day will see fish, and vice 
versa.  In my family it is lutefisk which reigns supreme on 2nd Day - 
and which causes a temporary reversion from the silver cutlery to 
regular steel cutlery, as lutefisk blackens silver very quickly.

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

Would this be sweet wheat-bread, with raisins and candied fruit in 
the dough?

> *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.

They are closely related to pre-Christian traditions - they 
originated as an the embodiment of the souls of the past generations 
who lived on a farm.  They would tend animals and the farm, and 
generally protect and provide for the wellbeing of the farm, but only 
if treated well - if treated badly, they would set up all sorts of 
mischief as vengeance.  

An important part of treating them properly was to give them food - 
originally one would pour the richest Christmas-ale on a specific 
place, but in latter years this had changed to placing rich hot 
Christmas-porridge with lots of fat and syrup in the barn on 
Christmas-eve.  The Christmas-porridge traditionally was not a 
riceporridge, but cooked on cream and sour-cream, with wheat-flour, 
and was very rich in itself.  

If one failed to do this, one really was in trouble.  For instance, 
one tale explains how on one farm, the maid was tasked with taking 
out the food to the nisse.  This maid, however, didn't believe in the 
nisse, and thought it was too bad to put such rich food out just when 
it was just going to be food for foxes and mice and rats, so she ate 
it herself.  The next time she went into the barn, however, she was 
assailed by the nisse, and as punishment for having eaten his food, 
he grabbed her and danced her so hard that she died from exhaustion.  

One could also give the nisse items of clothing, but care should be 
taken not to give them new clothes - one tale tells of how one farmer 
was so pleased with the help the nisse gave, that he gifted him with 
all-new trousers of white goat-leather.  Then, to his surprise, the 
nisse no longer did any work at the farm.  When he finally met the 
nisse in person, he asked why.  "Well, I can't make thise nice new 
trousers dirty, can I?" was the response.

Best regards
Christian Stubø