There's many ways of celebrating Christmas on this little globe of ours. This is how it's done in Finland. Or maybe I should not make it so general. Our family doesn't go through all the traditions. We've got our own.
I think the traditional way is to have a rice-porridge lunch at some point, a big festive ham-dinner at one point, Christmas sauna at some point, church in the evening and if there's kids in the house at one point a Santa Claus is going to come by to give presents. The Santa will want to hear the kids sing Christmas songs and the kids can go sit in his lap if they dare. The presents are usually opened after Santa has gone away.
Usually, we skip the church part all together. We're not that religious. Janne and his mom did go to the cemetery to visit the graves of his dad and cousins; lit some candles for them. It was a brief trip. Usually janne's brothers go too, but they didn't this time. Having Titan AE on TV was more important. Guys!
We had the Christmas sauna at noon, at home. In the old times, 100 years ago, sauna was a family thing. The saunas were huge and the whole family or even extended family went at once. Saunas of today are smaller, about 3-6 square meters and people are more shy and want to have their privacy. Adults usually like to sauna alone, in pairs or by genre. Our little family of five has fallen into the genre-style, not that it matters to any of us what we see or don't. It has just turned out the boys like it better when it's dad washing them. Anyone who has ever tried to wash the hair of a child under 5 years old will understand this. I'm afraid I've got the questionable skill to transfer my own fear of drowning/having water on my face, to my kids. Also, this arrangement gives the chance for me and Rebekka to have some quality time together and we often have good chats and singing in the sauna. She's always got a thousand questions for me in the sauna. Try relax with the third degree... eh...
Usually, when we've spent Christmas eve in my mom-out-law's house, we've had the porridge-lunch but this time she decided to skip that. Maybe because of the fact that our schedule was running a bit late. It was already past 2pm when we got there and the Santa (her brother in costume) usually comes around 5pm. We ate the Christmas dinner some time after 3pm, or maybe closer to 4pm. It was yummy. There was the traditional ham and the usual casseroles to accompany it. There was also mashed potatoes and another type of meat. I think it was Carelian stew. As a newborn-vegetarian I was a tad bit worried about the dinner. I've always thought that the best part of Christmas is the dinner. What if I can't eat the whole traditional dinner? The background of my new-found lifestyle is 50% of my own free will and interest on the vegetarian lifestyle; and 50% because of my little condition known as GERD (google it) that gets irritated if I eat animal fat. I've been calling myself a semi-veggie because I figured if I can find some kind of meat that doesn't irritate the Gerdy, I'd probably eat it. Now I've learned that any meat that has been in the oven for several hours is quite possibly gerdy-approved. So I ate the ham and the stew. And I loved it and don't regret it. *grin* This revelation of over-cooked meat doesn't rock my veggie-World that much. I'll be living off woks and salads on daily basics. I really don't have the energy and time to cook a piece of meat for hours very often. It will probably be a just a festive thing for me, eating meat I mean. i think next time will be in January 21st, when I have a birthday and I'm gonna go check if my favorite Chinese dinner Roasted duck in a sweet and sour sauce falls to the Gerdy-approved meat-group. The dinner/lunch is going to be Janne's birthday present for me. Oops, sidetracked. Sorry.
Back to Christmas. I think I've covered all but Santa. He came around 6pm. The kids were ecstatic; jumpy and smiley. Then there was the knock on the door and Kas went to open the door. When he saw the big bearded man in red clothes he ran quickly back in daddy's lap with eyes the size of a plate. They all stared in silence as the Santa sat down and ask "Is there naughty kids in this house?" Nobody dared to say anything. All the adults were looking at the kids waiting for a response. I came to conclusion they were afraid to lie to Santa. *LOL* All our talk of "don't be naughty or Santa won't come/will take your gifts to somewhere else" etc. at work. Janne has really been saying that stuff a lot this year... Next, the Santa asked if any of the kids would want to sit in his lap. Santeri was brave and went to sit there. He stared at the old guy in scared/respective awe. Kas hid in daddy's arms and almost cried. Rebekka sat next to me quiet and slightly shivering. Especially when next thing Santa asked was if anyone would sing for him and that he had heard that Rebekka had a nice singing voice. I talked about that with her in the sauna earlier and she said she wouldn't want to sing to him alone. All us adults were too scared of making fools of our selves to help her out. Stupid adults. *glare* Anyhoo, it was a very awkward moment. I think it was stretch a bit too far, when they kept asking about the singing. It's always such a big deal. It's supposed to be how the kids pay for the work Santa has to do to come visit. Finally, they carried in the presents and Santa started reading them and Santeri was his little helper, carrying the presents for everyone. After a while, Kas joined him too. It got more relaxed. After about 5 bags of presents, Santa left and we started opening the presents.
The kids got a lot of toys, as usual. They seemed more popular than the previous years. Not one gift was taken for granted or disregarded for not being interesting enough. Everything just happened to be just want they had been asking for. Cars, dinosaurs, Lego's, piano, book, clothes, etc. Adults had about 3 presents each, too. In my three packages there were a towel, box of chocolate, Palmolive-gift-package and a hand mixer. The hand mixer was from Janne. I gave him a package that contained shirt-shorts-pajama that read "King of home nights", a Spiderman comic book and a scratch ticket. I gave his brothers some mind-boggling puzzles because I know they love them. You know, those 3d wooden puzzles that some people do for stress-relief? And I gave Janne's sister and mother packages from a place called Hair store. They were for dyed hair because they both dye their hair almost religiously. I also got the book Eclipse for my niece, but she'll get that one when she comes in Saturday. Maybe I should get something for sister's kids tomorrow before they get here...
The rest of Christmas eve was pretty relaxed. We were at the mom-ou-law's house until 9pm. The kids played with their new toys, I tried to pass the time and at some point we ate some more ham so the kids wouldn't need to anything else at home. I figured Kas might fall asleep in the car. And he did. Too bad now days he wakes up when I take off his clothes. Especially with the winter clothing... It's just ridiculous how much we need to dress them in just for a little trip in the car. When we got home, Rebekka and Santeri went to bed pretty soon. We tried tugging in Kas too, but he was making some noise until 11pm.
At 10pm hubby and I opened a bottle of wine that one of his bosses gave him for Christmas. We planned to have a romantic evening. Eh, we watched the movie Shooter, starring Mark Wahlberg. Super romantic. *ROFL* Well, it was nice watching something together for once. We're usually both watching our own screens doing our own stuff. And there was more romance later... We only planned to drink a couple of glasses of the wine since neither of us really likes wine. But this one turned out to be really good. Wine usually makes my gag-reflex go wild, but not this time. It was a bit bitter, but I guess all wine is. I found it pretty good anyway. Pleasant surprise. I've always wanted to have this little habit of having a glass of wine every now and then and feel... well; better, classier. Due to, erm, certain things, hubby might be buying me this wine quite often now. *whistles* This wine didn't even give me a headache like wine usually does. I think it's because the wine was called "Paula" and it came from South America. I think I'll like all Paulas coming from South America. :D
Oh, more of the Christmas traditions. So, as you may have gathered; the main celebration happens on Christmas eve here. Christmas day it self is pretty much dedicated to relaxing and spending time at home with the family. Of course those crazy religious people might go to church and stuff. But we'll be sticking at home. I will probably be asleep until 2pm. *LOL* Rebekka will probably be visiting some friends. I took some pictures today/last night. I might be posting them tomorrow when I find the cable and have time. i should be in bed already...
I WISH YOU ALL A MERRY CHRISTMAS; MAY IT BE PEACEFUL AND FILLED WITH HAPPINESS!
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