Final Christmas Preparations!

Merry Christmas to all of you who are celebrating this year! May you have a wonderful holiday!

Being a Danish national by birth — who has lived in the USA for many years — our Christmas is an interesting blend of cultures.

Now that the kids have left home and have been living on their own for a decade, we have a traditional Danish Christmas meal but we celebrate Christmas on December 25th as is typical in the US, instead of the evening of December 24th as is typical in Denmark.

Since I am the Dane in the family, I am also the one who does most of the cooking for this particular festivity. I'm OK with that because I learned much of my cooking from my mother who was in the catering business, so I was inducted into the culinary arts at a very early age!

I don't mind being the one who cooks the Christmas dinner, since food has always been the most important aspect of the holiday for me, far more so than gifts, lavish decorations and other such things.

In our particular case, a "traditional Danish Christmas dinner" is a pork roast, served with red cabbage, small new potatoes, green peas and of course the obligatory ocean of gravy. And then we have a particular style of Christmas rice pudding with red cherry sauce for dessert. Might sound kind of strange to many out there, and I have always found it interesting how diverse the ways of celebrating Christmas really is, around the world.

Of course family is really important too and our middle son is staying with us over Christmas, and we're spending the day tomorrow with some dear friends of ours who have been part of our Christmas here for almost a decade now.

Thankfully we have been promised a clear day — although cold and windy — for which I am grateful because it means our friends are not going to have to travel to our place in inclement weather.

Snow for Christmas is actually not that common around these parts, although we have a nice view of the snow covered mountains from our back yard. As far as I am concerned, that snow is precisely where it belongs: In the distance, making for a pretty view!

I have much gratitude for having made it through another year. It might not have been a great year, but we have our health, each other and our friends and that's definitely something to be grateful for!

Also looking forward to taking it a little bit easier for a few days up until New Year's eve... I don't really get very many days off.

For now, though, I'm going to get some good rest ahead of tomorrow's cooking and eating extravaganza!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a wonderful Christmas!

How about you? Are you celebrating Christmas? Are there some particular traditions — food, or otherwise — that are important to you? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

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Created at 2024.12.25 00:37 PST
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