It's the third Sunday of advent, and thus it's time for another GIVEAWAY. This Sunday, we asked Marta from @martafrantzen to share her favourite Norwegian Christmas tradition with us all:
Christmas and traditions are words that goes well together. What would Christmas even be, without all those things that we do every year. When you start a family, you connect two people's family traditions and try to make them your own.
In a country like Norway, many of us have grown up with the same traditions. We are not that many here, and the culture are not so different from place to place. But some things are obviously not exactly the same. For example, my family and my husband's family eat very different food on Christmas Eve. While his family eats codfish, I'm from a "stick meat" family. There I put my foot down ;-) So when we invite for Christmas dinner, there will never be fish on the table! Luckily my husband are not as stubborn as myself, and don't care what we eat :)
From his childhood, however, we have included a tradition that I did not grow up with - and that's Christmas stockings first thing on Christmas day. After the children are in bed on Christmas Eve, I fill the stockings with some candy, a small gift and a magazine. As my mother-in-law says: "There is something about knowing that it is not quite over after the last gift on Christmas Eve":)
In the weeks before Christmas, we have several traditions that we appreciate. We make Christmas decorations, bake Christmas cookies, have a calendar and we take part in the Christmas tree lighting in town. Every year we also arrange a Christmas workshop in our home, where we invite our friends. Adults and kids fill the house and we are making decorations and eating Christmas food. It really is one of the nicest thing we do during the year. But then came the year of Covid..... And many of the things we love to do is canceled. It has been a slightly different advent this year. But we have also done many of the nice traditional things that we are use to. Like baking and decorating gingerbread cookies. It's probably mostly me who bakes - but the kids are eager to take part in the decorating. At least as long as it involves them eating more candy than what ends up on the cakes.
