Discovering Denmark: It's December!

After a decent sleep in, to recover from Friday evening and Saturday morning, we got ourselves together, and managed to get ready for the day. Sunday was the first day of December, which means it's the first day of Advent! On every Sunday leading up until Christmas you light a candle, so on Sunday our first candle was lit. Sunday was also the first day of the Advent Calendar, everyday from the 1st to the 24th of December you get a gift on the Advent Calendar. The first gift I received from the advent calendar was 2 chocolate advent calendars! We then lit the Candles that we had decorated on Saturday afternoon, which burn a certain amount every day leading up to Christmas.

After we had completed our Advent festivities we put on our Scout Uniforms ready to go to the Scout Market, which is a Christmas Market run by scouts in their scout hall. There were lucky dips, and raffles,carols and auctions. There was also food, various cakes and things, as well as æbleskiver, which are balls of batter, that look similar to dutch pancakes, that you cover in icing sugar and jam. Delicious! Both Natacia and I had a go at the lucky dip, and Natacia won some tiny socks, and I won a material cone for putting nuts in. We also bought some tickets for the raffle, but were unsuccessful in winning anything. The small scouts, for whom Natacia is a leader, sung some carols, then all the scouts dressed up in white dresses, with candles and marched slowly in, singing a Danish song, sung some more, then walked out singing the same Danish song. It was very sweet. Once the markets were over, we helped pack the hall up, before slowly walking back to the bus stop to catch the bus home.

Once we got off the bus, a stop early, we walked home via some houses that were decorated with Christmas lights. When we arrived home everyone had already started dinner, because partway through dinner Oliver had to leave for the train station to go back to boarding school.

After we had finished eating we attempted to do our maths homework, and were kinda unsuccessful... it was hard. And the excitement began...

At a quarter to 7 people started arriving at the house with a multitude of different things. We took all these things out the back into the shed. In the shed was a wooden archway covered in chicken wire. There were many branches from Christmas Tree's also in the shed, we covered the entire archway in the tree branches, by tucking them into the chicken wire, until there was no wood visible at all. Once we had done this we took various copper coloured items such as copper wire, carrots, onions, potatoes, apples, capsicums leaf ornaments, and copper spray painted barley stalks, and attached them to the archway as well. The finishing touches of fairy lights and a copper shield were added. This archway was in celebration of Natacia's Cousin's parent's 12 and a half year wedding anniversary. Once we had finished decorating the archway we all went back inside the house to warm up a bit, have something to drink, and eat some delicious Danish cakes. After we had all finished eating we put the archway in a trailer and headed out to Natacia's Cousin's house. When we got there we secured the arch to the doorway and plugged in the lights. We also said hello to the horses and chickens and dog. We then went home to sleep.

At six O'Clock this morning we woke up, got dressed, and ready for school. At 6:40 we left to go back to the Cousin's house. Everyone gathered quietly with candles and pots and pans. When everyone had arrived at 7 we all walked around to stand in front of the door where we made a lot of noise banging the pots and pans together to 'wake up' the couple. Then everyone started singing. On the second song the couple came and stood on the doorstep, then they stepped under the archway. When the singing was finished they walked around and thanked everybody for coming, before everyone then walked under the archway, inside the house for breakfast.

It was a very lovely morning, and an experience I have never had before.

Below are some Photo's of the Christmas preparations and the celebratory archway preparations.