Traditions in the Making

by Marjukka Grover,
Alice Lapuerta and Irma Lachmund

Families around the world are mixing their traditions during this holiday season. They mix and match rituals from each of their culturs until they find the perfect balance. However, this can be difficult. Extended family members can become easily offended and your spouse may not be in agreement on the specifics. Rarely can we rely on our local community to support us in our endeavor, as they may not understand our need to continue our traditions. Our efforts often feel artificial and we question our motivations. But with a little bit of encouragement and a whole lot of patience, you too can blend your cultures this holiday season! The following three families share their holiday traditions with us this month. Each is motivated by different factors and has found unique ways of keeping their favorite rituals alive. Happy Holidays!

Celebrating Finnish Holidays in England
By Marjukka Grover

Marjukka, the cofounder of Multilingual Matters, is originally from Finland and raised her (now) grown children in England with her English husband. As she tells us, sometimes you simply just make do with what you can when it comes to celebrating holidays.

May Day
May Day is a big event in Finland. When the children were small I tried to create a Finnish carnival atmosphere on May days with balloons and paper streamers. However, it is hard to celebrate an event in a country that does not share the same holiday. In Finland “Vappu” is a public holiday to celebrate the spring and labour day. There are marches and students singing on the street, people merrymaking until early hours of morning. In England this was pretty much a normal day. I gave up this celebration quite early on.

Midsummer
For almost 20 years we organised a midsummer party in our garden for all the Finns and their families living in the Bristol area (and some of our English friends too). We would warm the sauna, everyone brought some food and drinks and, weather permitting, we would lay the table outside with a white table cloth, flowers, some birch twigs and the Finnish flag (traditional Finnish midsummer decorations). Finnish music was played and, after few drinks, people were dancing “jenkka” and “polka” well in to the night.

Independence day
6th of December is Finnish Independence Day (from Russia) and again we would have a party for the local Finns, this time for the adults and older children only (so our children took part from age 10-12). This followed the same formula as the midsummer party - the sauna was warmed up, people would bring food and drinks. As in Finland the candles were burning in each window from 18:00 onwards and the Finnish flag was the centre piece on the table decorations. We always played “Finlandia” when guests were arriving - and later on some guest sang traditional Finnish songs.

Christmas
Just as in Germany, Christmas Eve is the main part of the Christmas for Finns. We would start the celebrations by decorating the tree with the Finnish flag, along with flags of other nations. We would all have a sauna in early afternoon followed by a Finnish Christmas meal in early evening. Dishes included: ham, slow-baked swede, a fermented potato bake and we would listen to Finnish Christmas carols. I have always felt that opening presents is almost the end of the Christmas magic, so we have left opening them until Christmas Day when we have followed the English traditions for the whole day - even watching the Queen’s speech!

Christmas Nostalgy Abroad
By Alice Lapuerta

Alice lives in Austria with her Ecuadorian husband and two children. She grew up in a bilingual/bicultural household with a Korean father and Austrian mother. As Alice reminds us, there is more to the holidays than meets the eye.

I always used to get wistful around Christmas time when I lived abroad. There is a quintessential Christmas-smell that is unique, that I can find only at home. It is difficult to pinpoint, difficult to describe. It is, maybe, a mixture of smells consisting of cloves, walnuts, beeswax candles, dried apples and oranges, freshly-baked Kletzenbrot and Lebkuchen. Or maybe it is the smell of snow and fir trees mingling with the smell of smoke, since many houses in our neighborhood still heat their tiled stoves with wood. When I smell the smoke emerging from the chimneys, I know that Christmas is not far away. To me, it is the smell of childhood. And with it, all sorts of warm and nostalgic feelings well up.

Abroad, Christmas has always been a time when homesickness struck the fiercest. What wouldn’t I give to be able to visit a Christkindlmarket, an Advent market, of standing next to a wooden stand that sells homemade Christmas decoration, nibbling on a gingerbread cookie and warming my half-frozen hands on a steaming mug of Glühwein in the freezing cold! How I would love to celebrate the ritual of lighting a candle on the Advent wreath every Sunday together with my family, which is now scattered all over the globe. What wouldn’t I give to be able to stomp through knee-deep snow to church, in the dark with a lantern, to pick up the light of peace from church, or to attend the midnight mass on Christmas eve, listening, on the way home, to the trumpet sounds of Stille Nacht rising clearly above the chiming church bells. It is a tremendous, awe-inspiring moment, in which I soak in all these sensations, smells, sights, and relish in the silence that settles after the echoes of the bells and trumpets have dimmed. It makes me forget all the crazy consumerism and pre-Christmas stress and reminds me that maybe this is what Christmas is supposed to be all about: moments of holiness and silence.

Abroad, there was nothing that I could do about the snow, fir trees, or church bells, and there’s nothing that my husband, try as he might, could do to change the shape of the Ecuadorian cypress to resemble the central-European Tannenbaum, or fir tree. For some reason I was particularly disturbed at having a cypress as my Christmas tree rather than a fragrantly smelling fir. Yet out of walnut shells, glitter paper and cotton balls, I made my own makeshift Christmas tree decorations and hung them up. I tried to bake Christmas cookies, scolding myself that I should have paid better attention when my grandmother baked fruit bread and gingerbread. I tried to recreate a festive family atmosphere at home without Kletzenbrot, Lebkuchen and Weihnachtsstollen. But my makeshift substitutes weren’t bad, either. The lack of many spices, sweets and traditional decorations made me very creative, indeed.

Christmas abroad was always a patchwork of different cultures, traditions and tastes. On Christmas eve in Korea, we ate kimchi with a very American-style Thanksgiving turkey; in Ecuador, we had Empanadas with coffee. Ultimately, in time, I realized, that the details did not matter. Whether cypress or fir tree, whether Lebkuchen or empanadas, it was all about family, and celebrating with those we love most. Our Christmases abroad turned out to be very different, yes. But they were festive after all.

“German” Christmas Down Under:
In Shorts at the Beach
By Irma Lachmund

Irma is originally from Germany and now lives with her Australian husband and children in Australia. It is one thing to combine different cultures in the same hemisphere but imagine what it must be like for a German to spend Christmas in the heat of summer!

Only the first year after our daughter Theresa was born, in 1996, did we celebrate Christmas Eve as the main event. With two children of school age we now spread the celebrations across the two important days. I still cook the traditional Christmas Eve meal of my childhood: fried sausages, fried potatoes and sauerkraut. The celebrations are kicked off with the children participating at the traditional Christmas play at our Lutheran church, for the fourth year, presented in German by local children of German speaking families. Before it gets dark we put out some homemade reindeer food (see recipe below) to make the reindeers stay a bit longer at our house. Then we have a feast with our closest Australian family members, talking about traditions and sharing stories about Christmas. We usually get dressed up and also open some presents. The plastic Christmas tree with electric candles cannot make up for the freshly cut pine tree with real candles of my German childhood, but we are happy with it. The children help with decorating. On Christmas day we unpack the rest of the presents that appear during the night brought by Santa Claus, who comes through our chimney. We have Christmas stockings as well, but they are not so important. The lounge is a mess when we unpack all remaining presents early in the morning on Christmas Day, over a cup of tea. Then we are off to the beach, meeting with friends for morning tea, playing some games, telling stories and sharing special Christmas food, such as our traditional German herring salad. And we jump into the clear ocean for a Christmas swim. Dress is casual on the day before we go home for a Christmas Dinner as a small family unit again, sharing cold ham, some chicken, more salad and maybe sea food, the meal to be finished up with traditional English Christmas pudding if there is room in our tummies. Leftovers are kept for Boxing Day (26 December) that sees us going to the beach and meeting friends and distant family members once more for a picnic at a nice spot.

Magic Reindeer Food

Directions
The reindeer food recipe is very easy! Put some quick or rolled oats in a big wooden or plastic bowl and add some coloured sugar. Many hands stir with a wooden spoon. The more stiring the merrier! As you stir, tell stories about Santa and wonder how Santa could make it through the cold night to all these children in the world! The children then take the magic reindeer food home to put outside their house on Christmas Eve. Sometimes we used homemade white sacks or simple brown paper bags which the children decorate with their names and Christmas drawings or with whatever they like. Both are tied with a red ribbon, and before you tie the final knot, add a printout of the poem below:

Sprinkle on the lawn at night
The moon will make it sparkle bright
As Santa’s reindeer fly and roam
This will guide them to your home.

Alternative Recipe
Instead of coloured sugar you might want to use glitter, especially in metropolitan areas where it is less likely that real animals will eat your mixture, because Santa’s reindeers don’t mind and they like the sparkle.

Additional Information
Make some spare bags and take one to a friend or an older neighbour and you will be making someone very happy. This became a very special new tradition in our life, brought into the family by Mrs Ognenis, the kindergarten teacher of my now 8 year old boy Miles.

No more Christmas without our Magic Reindeer Food!

Irma Lachmund is the founder of Bilingual Families Perth, www.geocities.com/bilingualfamilies, a local network that connects 400 families from 30 language backgrounds. She has two bilingual children, 8 and 10 years old. Irma lives in Perth, Western Australia.

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