Angela's Blog | December 2023 (Christmas Special)

Hello, everyone!

Greetings from a sunny and relatively warm Mossy Bottom. The heaps of snow that we have had here since November have suddenly vanished with the warm spell we are currently having and the green grass is resurfacing from underneath. It almost feels like spring again. Although it was lovely to have an abundance of snow so early, it’s great that we don’t have to burn quite as much firewood and the bright rays of sun seem all the more special. Besides, the neighbours have reassured me that in all likelihood there will still be a “valkea joulu,” or White Christmas, so I am crossing all my fingers that the weather gods will stick to their original plan of snow shortly before Christmas Eve.

Due to its date of release, I thought it would be only fitting for this blog to be all about Christmas. As many of you know, I was born in South Korea but emigrated with my parents to Romania aged three, moved to Germany for work and university as an adult, and then moved to Ireland during the Covid-19 pandemic… And of course, we now find ourselves in Finland. So I thought it might be interesting to write about Christmas customs and traditions that I have either personally experienced in the different countries I have lived in or stood out to me due to their uniqueness. I hope you enjoy!

As a child, I used to both love and dread Christmas. I loved the Christmas lights on the streets and all the wonderful decorations in homes and shops that inevitably got one into the festive spirit. Nevertheless, I would fear the day of returning to kindergarten or school after the Christmas break, since everyone would talk about and many would even bring what they had received from Santa on Christmas, and I would, year after year, sit in a dark corner empty-handed looking Grinch-like.
Whilst Christmas Day is a national holiday in South Korea due to its large Christian population, it is not a day of family celebration and the country is not on Santa’s map of present deliveries for good children. So my parents, despite their many wonderful qualities, decided to celebrate Christmas the Korean way, i.e. no celebration and no presents.

A Romanian couple close to my parents, however, Florica and Alexandru, would always kindly invite our family for a traditional Romanian Christmas dinner at their house on Boxing Day, so that was something that I massively looked forward to and appreciated more and more as I got older, especially as I became increasingly aware of the preparations that begin much earlier. As per Romanian tradition, a few weeks before winter officially began, they would travel in their 1980s Dacia to the faraway countryside, approximately 5 hours away, to a free-range pig farm to catch a pig and process it for the winter. In some of the years, I was able to accompany them and have fond memories of enjoying the picturesque view driving through the beautiful, untouched Romanian forests and passing by rustic farmhouses. Although admittedly, I stayed undercover in the car with my Sony Walkman on high volume listening to the Backstreet Boys for the duration of the actual catching and processing the pig (as a kid, I found squealing pig noises pretty terrifying), it was strangely comforting to know that the pig had had a good life and every edible part of the pig would be consumed and enjoyed. After arriving back at the house, Florica would get busy making sausages with her 100-year-old cast iron manual sausage maker passed down the generations. The sausages would then hang on washing lines in the hallway and kitchen, so the whole house would smell of sausages for about 24 hours (rather her than me!). The rest was put in the refrigerator and freezer to make “sarmale” (baked Romanian cabbage rolls with pork and rice stuffing), “ciorbă” (Romanian sour soup with fermented wheat bran), and “friptură” (pork steak roast), all of which were served during the Christmas season. In terms of vegetables, the preparation would start even earlier in late summer or early autumn. We would have a barbecue outside for several days roasting bell peppers, tomatoes, and aubergines and peel off the outer layer to make aubergine spread with garlic or a vegetable spread named “zacuscă,” which is very similar to what was once known as Gypsy Sauce but has since I believe been renamed as Paprika Sauce Hungarian Style. The spreads were also served with bread as appetizers during the Christmas period, together with the Romanian traditional soup. And at the end of the four-course meal, if one could by some miracle still move and eat, the dining table would be filled with creamy, mouth-watering desserts.

A huge source of excitement for me was the Romanian Christmas tradition of going around people’s homes and carolling on Christmas Eve. My friends and I would start practising Romanian traditional lyrics called “colindă” about a month before Christmas and in the evening of Christmas Eve, we would meet in front of the mayor’s house, knock on his door, and sing. Afterwards, he would invite us in, deliver a speech, and we would get sweets and “cozonac” (sweet bread). We would then move on to our teachers’ houses and pay visits to those who we knew and do the same. It would be about 6-7 AM on Christmas Day that we would return home and contrary to my poor friends who had to get up 2-3 hours later to receive their Christmas gifts, I could soundly sleep knowing there’s nothing suspicious under the Christmas tree.

After moving to Germany, the Christmas season became my favourite and most anticipated season of the year. At the Christmas market, which is pretty spectacular and opens at the end of November, my best friend Jennifer and I would indulge ourselves in drinking Glühwein (mulled wine) and Eierpunsch (egg punch) and eating crepês and poffertjes at every given opportunity. Due to where my flat was at the time, I passed by the Christmas market every day after work or university and just seeing the lights and the beautifully decorated wooden cabins of the market was an immediate mood-lifter.

Never before had I experienced people go through quite so much effort in hand-crafting advent calendars as I did in Germany. Usually for their partner, or in the case of young parents, their small children as well - they would acquire a small present for each day of December leading up to Christmas. I remember being awestruck by a friend who had hand-stitched every “door” of the days of December until Christmas and had hand-made all of the little gifts inside the advent calendar, which included items such as mittens, socks, a hat, and a bookmark. On St. Nicholas Day, which is celebrated on December 6th in Germany, grown-ups would receive an additional present and children would leave a boot in front of their doors the night before, in the hope that by the next morning, the benevolent St. Nicholas would have filled it with sweets and small gifts. A friend once told me how her toddler son took his father’s biggest boot and put it in front of his door, hoping to receive many more presents, and I remember thinking how ingenious this was. But when I told Daniel about the boot tradition, he turned up his nose and immediately said, “Not in my boot!” So I suppose this particular tradition is not to everyone’s taste...

Christmas Eve marks the day of close family gathering and exchanging of gifts, and even though this sounded a bit strange to me at first as someone who had always associated December 25th with Christmas, it was great that on the 25th, I could celebrate the day enjoying raclette and fondue with Jennifer and her family. Jennifer would take her raclette very seriously and have her electric raclette table grill and various cheeses, vegetables, mushrooms, and seafood perfectly set up. Although I’d never had raclette before moving to Germany, I do miss it and hope to continue this tradition one day (even though Daniel is always insistent on his Yorkshire puddings with gravy on Christmas Day!).

In Ireland, Daniel infected me with his passion for making Christmas tree decorations, so we would compete who would make the most quirky creatures to hang on the Christmas tree. Some of these creatures have made it here and are hanging on our current Christmas tree here in Finland. I would argue my creatures are in every aspect superior to Daniel’s but he might be reluctant to admit this.

Since the Christmases I had spent in Ireland were during the Covid-19 lockdown, I didn’t get to see indoor decorations in people’s homes but in terms of outside decorations and Christmas lights, the Irish certainly seem to go all out to make their houses look gorgeous. In the late afternoon of Christmas Eve, when everything was quiet and people were enjoying themselves in their cosy homes, Daniel and I would drive around our area in our little Nissan Micra just to see the stunning and often very creative Christmas light decorations of our distant neighbours.

Packing the Mossy Bottom Christmas calendars in 2021 and 2022 was a delightful activity that made me feel a bit like a Christmas elf. It was lovely to get to know the names of members of the Mossy Bottom community and read little notes that were added, some of which were filled with humour and made us laugh out loud. I hope Daniel makes calendars again next year so that this tradition can live on.

On Christmas Day in Ireland, we would have a self-sufficient meal, even if these were, at times, somewhat non-conventional. We are both avid catchers of fish so when the weather allowed us to do so, we went out on our wee boat to Sligo Bay to catch and freeze as many fish as we could. We caught a lot of mackerel but only a few pollack, so we saved the pollack to make fish and chips on Christmas Day. And yes, it’s definitely not a traditional Christmas meal, but for us, it was an absolute highlight. Also, to counterbalance this, Daniel made it a point to always have Yorkshire puddings with gravy on Christmas Day, accompanied by our delicious home-grown roasted vegetables.

Here in Finland, arguably the land of Christmas trees, Daniel was beaming with joy when he cut down a spruce tree on our land and brought it inside to decorate. It’s still hard to believe that we are able to do this. It’s the biggest Christmas tree we’ve ever had and we had heaps of fun decorating it. Our daughter, Juno, is thoroughly entranced by it every evening with the Christmas lights on and so are we.

Our neighbours have been - much to our embarrassment - unbelievably kind to us, giving us beautifully packaged home-made jams, gingerbread cookies, and many more. We hope to repay them one day for all the kindness they’ve shown to us. Our Finnish friends who live about two hours away came to visit us last week and introduced us to the Finnish tradition of eating gingerbread cookies with blue cheese (Daniel refuses to ingest the two together but before casting any judgement folks, just try it!) and “glögi” (Nordic mulled wine).

In our local village group, an invitation was sent out to join the Christmas sauna, something that personally, I would be enthusiastic about but as some of you might know, Daniel is still being actively converted to enjoying. So we’ll see what the future holds.

As we now find ourselves in the land of Santa Claus, we cannot wait to discover more about Christmas customs and traditions here in Finland and read all about the magical tales and folklore this time of the year.

Thank you so much for all your lovely comments in my last blog post - they were heart-warming to read! I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and enjoy this magical season of the year, no matter how conventionally or unconventionally you choose to do so. My next blog post will be in January, so I wish you all a Happy New Year 2024!