Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Christmas in Finland

Finnish Christmas

Finnish Christmas starts at the start of December. At that time people start to buy gifts and sing Christmas songs. The Christmas tree is brought to the house and the children start to decorate it with beautiful decorations. Advent calendars are bought to little children so they can wait for Christmas every day in December. Some people even burn advent candles every Sunday for the four weeks before Christmas Day, because they are waiting for Jesus to be born (not literally). People start to act nicely from the start of December because Santa’s little helpers might just be watching for you around the corner.

When it’s getting close to Christmas Eve parents start to make all kinds of food for the Christmas dinner. There are carrot, potato and swede casserole, ham, beetroot salad called rosolli, raw pickled salmon and many others. The dinning at Christmas Eve usually lasts for few hours because there is so much food to eat.

But before the dinner, there are lots of things people do on the 24th of December. For example in the morning people go to their relatives graves to wish them happy Christmas. Some people do this on the 23rd evening because people bring candles to the graves and they are burning brightly in the dark evening.

After the visit to the graves people start the preparations for the great evening. Probably they have already decorated the house but they can finish the last of the great amounts of food. Their relatives come and they start to spend time with them. Soon the huge dinner start.

When the dinner’s finished they start to wait for Santa to show up and they can open the presents. The little children might see a red brownie’s cap whiz in the window.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Christmas in Poland is really beautiful, but in your country is amazing !
Greetings from Poland !