Christmas

In Sweden most people celebrate Christmas Eve more than Christmas day. We try to celebrate both, using Christmas Eve as a festive present-opening and eating-loads-of-delicious-food-day. Christmas Day we try to keep more calm, reading the Christmas gosple, and talk about the person who's birth we are celebrating. Of course, the kids also play with their new toys and we more delicious food..!

This year we started the celebrating in our house, opening presents and eating rice porrige with cinnamon and sugar, like the rest of Sweden.

Egons favourite present this year was a panda bear. He calls it "Nanna" and loves to carry it around, pet it and kiss it.

Egon also enjoys his new harmonica, and the rest of us get to hear him enjoy it!

Alvin and Ivar were very excited about the note books they got. Why buy expensive gifts when they get this happy over a note book..?

We went to IKEA a few days before Christmas, and Alvin and Ivar saw a pile of blue cuddly sharks. Alvin got really excited and cuddled one, but then he remembered that he was six and probably shouldn't want a cuddly animal for Christmas. Then he spent the next couple of days saying that he didn't want a cuddly animal.

But this is how happy they were when they got them! Maybe they weren't too big after all?


At one o'clock it was time for Christmas dinner at Grandma and Grandpa Rydgren's. It's amazing how great food tastes at Christmas.

At three it was time for The Donald Duck Christmas show on TV. An interesting tradition that we shared with over a third of the population this year. After that most of the family went for a walk while a few of us cleaned up and got out the dessert.

After dessert it was time for Santa to come with his sack of presents. This year, Grandpa Rydgren played a trick on us. Usually the person who is supposed to dress up as Santa says something about going to buy a news paper, when he leaves. So Grandpa Rydgren said that he was going to do just that, and walked out the door. All the kids screamed when the doorbell rang. When they opened the door, Grandpa came in with the NEWSPAPER! A few minutes later, Santa came in the door, and everyone was so excited!

One of the presents the kids got was a puppet theater. What a fun present! Lovisa also got a cute apron with ladybugs on it, so now she's going to help out even more in the kitchen!

Christmas was wonderful this year, for all of us. Thanks everyone for making it special!