Though I celebrated a traditional Christmas Eve at my mum's with my family here in Sweden this year, we did do and eat some new things on the big day. In fact, I became so fond of some of these new things that I am sure they will be a part of many more of my future Christmas Eve celebrations. I am mainly referring to three new things - two edible ones and one Christmas game. So this Christmas Eve post will be all about Newbies And Traditions On Christmas Eve. :-)
When we first arrived at mum's on Christmas Eve, Lisen immediately took an interest in the funny looking little fellow by the Christmas tree. Hm...
Then it was time for rice pudding with a hidden almond. The tradition is that whomever gets the hidden almond wins something (I did not get it...).
My Christmas Lunch; rice pudding with sugar and cinnamon, a Christmas ham sandwich with mustard/beetroot salad and coffee.
After lunch it was time to prepare Christmas food for the Julbord. :-)
To keep up our strength through all this Christmas cooking we frequently had some sips of warm Glögg - mulled wine. :p
All that Christmas Candy my sister and I made before also kept us company during the day of course.
:p
So I did manage to save some. ;-)
The doggies got a bit impatient with their Christmas gifts, they were constantly under the Christmas tree sniffing and barking to let us know they wanted to open their gifts. Finally we caved in and let them choose and open one Christmas gift each while we were cooking, they both chose a pig's ear.
At 3 PM sharp - Donald Duck And His Friends time! Wahoo! A very important tradition in Sweden!
My favorite scene in the entire cartoon! I remember when I was a child I was so fascinated by how the elf could paint the chess board like that without the colors mixing? Lol! It took me forever to understand that "Checkered Paint" actually does not exist in real life...
Diva's favourite. :-)
After Donald Duck it was FINALLY time for JULBORD!!! :p
And this was Newbie Number One; crayfish marinated herring - soooo goood!!! I usually do not like any pickled or marinated herring except onion herring, but this one was insanely delicious. I actually tried it for the first time a few weeks earlier in a local grocery store, City Gross, when they treated all their customers to Julbord. This herring was on that Julbord and made by the staff in the fish counter - YUM!
Newbie Number Two; saffron biscuits with mascarpone and clementin mixture. Another very tasty delight I first tried in a local grocery store, Maxi. Perfect to finish off the Julbord with because it is a quite light and not so sweet or fatty mini dessert.
But the big show stoppers on the Julbord were not the newbies of course, it was the oldies! Like;
Janssons Temptation.
Christmas sausage, chipolata sausages and meatballs.
Ribs.
My first Christmas food plate. :p
Christmas Snaps Time, also always a part of our Julbord tradition! God Juuul - Merry Christmaaas!!!
After we had all stuffed ourselves with way too much food, (Doggy) Santa arrived. ;-)
Of course Lisen was the first one to step up to receive a(nother) Christmas gift (she looooves to open presents).
Diva also tore into her gifts.
Newbie Number Three - the Christmas Gift Game. Some of you might already have heard of this, and played it, but I had not until this Christmas. To play you need a pair of dices...
... and lots of Christmas gifts. Each person who plays brings gifts worth a predetermined sum of money (we set the sum to 100 SEK - 15 USD). The gifts should be unlabeled.
Time to play! Round One; when you get two of a kind on the dices you get to choose a gift from the pile.
Round Two; when the gift pile is gone set a timer (we had 40 minutes). During the timer time roll the dices again. This time however, as soon as anyone gets two of a kind that person gets to choose a gift from another person's gift pile to add to their own. When the time is up, well then you get to open the gifts you have managed to gather.
This was my best gift in my gift pile, a scratching lottery ticket where I won 500 SEK - 76 USD. Wahoo!
After all that playing around it was time for some last Christmas sweets.
Soft gingerbread cake.
And Swedish Cheesecake.
Served with whipped cream and strawberry jam. YUUUM!!
Diva kept a close eye.
Of course she also got some. :-)
As did Lisen. :-)
The End.
I hope you all had a great Christmas/Holidays too?! Now I just need to shake off this awful cold I have caught, hopefully in time for the New Year... But I think I will manage to squeeze in one more blog post before then though, so I will hold on with the Happy New Year wishes until then and finish off this post with a big, loud and cheerful Happy Weekend! instead. :p (Ahhh-chooo!)
