It truly is the most wonderful time of the year! Strolling around city's Christmas markets sipping Glühwein, enjoying the night with some classic seasonal films, watching the first snow to fall, decorating the tree with carols playing in the background, spending quality time with your family and friends, putting up lights all over the place, or just smelling the food from the kitchen...
Christmas means all that and much more, and very different things to different people. Since we all have our own distinctive Holiday traditions, here's in pictures what makes it special to us.
Let's start with our first Christmas at our new place. We really love having friends over and particularly gathering for pre-Christmas parties. Usually I can barely wait to set up the ambiance with beautiful decorations, lights, and scents. Living in France is amazing, but to have some home to our home, we usually have a trip to Ikea for a huge boxes of gingerbread and special Scandinavian mulled wine. That, plus the tree, and we're all set to enjoy the holiday season.
The city of lights gets a whole new meaning around Holiday season, and it's hard to escape the tones of carols.
For the French holiday foods I'm hoping to add more as I find material...;)
Finland
As everyone knows, it's very dark in Finland in December. That's the very reason we put up so many lights and candles, which, in turn, creates a festive atmosphere for celebrations.
24th is the actual day to celebrate, although it continues over the next couple of days. Here are couple of things picked from our Christmas Eve...
Some traditional dishes:
After dinner comes the part of the nights we've all been waiting- the gifts. Nothing beats the feeling of giving.
We usually go for a late evening / night walk on Christmas Eve, it's good for digestion and very much needed since the eating may continue all night...
It's pretty much a tradition already to go for a midnight sauna, and for the daredevils- see the pictures below!
And for the rest of our holiday we just love going out to the nature and do winter activities, and of course, a lot of sauna!
Feeling very lucky to get all these places to enjoy my favorite time of the year :).
