The days before christmas

I always love to take some time off before Christmas. I came to my parents place tuesday, and we have been able to do some shopping, cooking, decorating and just hanging out without stress this year. I am finished with all of my knitting, exept for the socks for Maria (but I have some time since I won´t see her until the 26:th). Yesterday we brought the tree in and today, after my sister and her sons have arrived we will decorate it. Tonight it snowed a bit, and I hope we´ll get some more snow before tomorrow.
Swedes celebrate more on Christmas Eve than any other day. I have always had a pretty standard swedish christmas, and we have always seen my grandparents and some cousins on that day. We start off by celebrating my mom, since the 24:th is also her birthday. She will get a feather and fan-patterned scarf from me this year.
After that we go to my grandparents, who live about an hour away. This year it´ll be my parents, myself, two of my sisters (k and e) and the boyfriend and two sons of K. Sister O is working this christmas and we will see her and her boyfriend the next day.
At one we start eating. I love the swedish christmas smörgåsbord. Lots of cold dishes, like herring, smoked salmon, liver pâte, ham with mustard, smoked eel, great cheases and all the "little hot" (direct translation) dishes like chipolata, swedish meat balls, Janssons temptation, oven baked omelette w/ mushrooms or espargus (grown by my grandpa), stew on elk meat and creamed green cabbage. Mmmmm. (the picture is not from our dinnertable, I stole it from somewhere but it gives you a picture).

To all this food we drink christmas beer and snaps, and sing snaps songs. I´ll make a rough translation of a couple of them

Hey brownie laddies, pour into your glasses and be jolly :// You live here a short time, with lots of toil and trouble, so hey brownie laddies, pour into your glasses and be jolly!

Imagine if I had my little snaps on a rope in my throat. I would pull it up and down, so that it would feel like many more! Imagine if I had my little snaps on a roap in my throat.

Of course, in swedish it all rhimes... My grandpa loves these songs. Now he is getting old (86 by now) and he is no longer, as I thought when I was younger, the strongest man in the world. He is pretty damn funny to have around still though.

At three we have had dessert, coffee and we are pretty full. The kids go up to see the disney christmas special that is on every christmas eve, and we stay around the table talking. At about 4.30 one of the men "goes out to buy a paper" and he comes back as santa to deliver the big sack of presents. It takes forever to read all the rhimes, and afterwards sister K with family will be in a hurry to go see her boyfriends family.

The evening is pretty soft. We eat the traditional boiled rice pudding with cloudberry jam for evening meal, drink some port and hang out. This year it´ll probably only be me and my parents for the evening.

Next year, when me and Andreas are married, we´ll probably make some changes. We will go to his parents place on the 23:rd (two hours from where my parents live and three from my grandparents), and stay there until the next night. They are not that many, only his parents and his sister. My sisters have moved in to their houses by then, and since their boyfriends parents also live in my parents town, they will probably get something together on christmas eve. On christmas day we´ll do the thing at my grandparents, and it´ll be better since my sisters don´t have to rush away to another thing later in the afternoon.