I love
traditions!
Especially during Christmas time!
My mum and I
talked about Christmas and our traditions during one of our drives to my
grandmother’s house the other day. Well, we mostly discussed if it would be
possible for her to cook something else this year on Christmas Eve. Here in Austria we
celebrate Christmas on the 24th of December. In the morning we
decorate our tree, then we have lunch and afterwards we take a long walk with
our dog. After coffee I start wrapping the presents for my parents, then put
them under the tree and afterwards we wait. I am usually too excited to read
something and that is why I am surfing the internet, posting Christmas wishes
on blogs, Facebook pages and sending e-mails to friends further away. At
five-ish my dad lights the candles on our tree, we feel overwhelmed with joy, start unwrapping our gifts and then
we have dinner. We always have the same dinner on Christmas Eve and mum and I
discovered that we are having it for almost 20 years now.
About five
years ago a friend of our family moved from Chapel Hill, North Carolina to
Vienna and we started celebrating Christmas Eve with him and either his partner
or his son, depending on who was coming to visit him over the holidays. These
were wonderful Christmas dinners but the food stayed the same.
This year
something is different. My mum always told me that we don’t go to a
Christmas Market until the beginning of December and I always stuck to that. This
year I haven’t! Christmas Markets opened on November 12th and I went
to one on the 15th for some punch before my late lecture on Tuesday.
It was a strange feeling but I told myself that drinking punch is not really attending
a Christmas Market. On Monday my uncle, who is a musician, played at the
Christmas Market before Karlskirche here in Vienna. My mum and I went there to hear him
play and to wander between the stalls, it was dark and cold, we had Vanilla
Pear Punch, parts of my family were there and it was the beginning of Christmas
season for me.
Since then
I noticed how much Vienna
had changed into Christmassy mode during the last two weeks. Christmas lights
are up, shop windows are decorated, you can buy roasted chestnuts and potatoes
on basically every street corner, Christmas songs are playing, I am in the mood
of lighting candles and it is so freezing cold.
Maybe
Christmas time is the most wonderful time of the year!
The reason
why I am writing this long post is because I want to show you some pictures
from Monday evening and my visit to the Christmas Market before Karlskirche and
maybe because I am really looking forward to celebrating Christmas this year.
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| rather empty Christmas Market |
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| some people before the Punch booth |
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| Musicians - my uncle is the one far right |
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| my cousin Juliane |
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| Karlskirche |
And who knows, maybe this year our Christmas menue will change as well?
I love our Christmas traditions too. We have so many of them and we're constantly adding to them, thanks to our "try something new" tradition. Every year, we have to try something new and if we happen to enjoy it, it becomes a permanent fixture. Last year, it was cookie mixes in jars and we loved that. The year before, it was a gingerbread house and the less said about that, the better.
ReplyDeleteAnd beside "try something new", my Christmas Eve is still very similar to the way it was when I was little. I'm well into my twenties and I still leave a glass of whisky and a mince pie for Father Christmas and a carrot for Rudolph because it simply wouldn't be Christmas without doing that. :) And my Mum still reads me 'Twas the Night Before Christmas and we have our traditional Christmas Eve viewing; the Christmas specials of The Vicar of Dibley, Blackadder and The Thin Blue Line, plus Muppet Christmas Carol.
And every other year, we make sure that we go to a Christmas market abroad. There's a big German Christmas market in London, on the South Bank, but nothing compares to actually going to Germany and seeing the markets there. Last year, it was Cologne and there's so much that I want to remember for the rest of my life about that trip. Mostly the people. There were so many people who heard us speaking English and then switched languages, asking us how long we were there for, had we been to Germany before, what did we think so far and telling us where the nicest food was to be found. It's one of the friendliest cities I've ever been to.