Creme de la creme of December in Sweden is Christmas Eve or Julafton in Swedish. People spend this day with family or very close friends.
In many families it begins at 3PM with one hour Donald Duck and other cartoons, strangely it plays almost the same cartoon as the years before and everyone in the room will watch with so much attention. I like Ferdinand, the big bull who loves to sniff flowers but Rolf doesn't feel the same way about it.
Then the traditional Christmas dinner which is called "Julbord" (Chirstmas table) will be served. Julbord is offered in many restaurants even before Christmas with prices range about USD 40-50.
Before eating Julbord, we start with drinking gl�gg, which is a heated spicy wine with raisins and almond.
The dishes generally are: rice pudding (rispudding), ham (julskinka), meatballs (k�ttbullar), chipolata sausage (prinskorv), julkorv (white big sausage that needs to be boiled with onion, lagerblad and pepper), Janssons frestelse (an anchovy gratin), pickled herring (inkokt �ttiksstr�mming), gravad lax, various kind of sill, stockfish (lutfisk), red cabbage (r�dk�l), red beet sallad (r�dbetssallad). Various kind of cheese is served. Also, "dip in the pot" is very traditional, (dopp i grytan), rye bread flavoured with brewer'swort (v�rtbr�d) and verious delicacies.
After dinner in our house, my husband as Jultomten (Santa Claus)will distribute the presents in the family. Marie comes with some similar rhymes in every present, giving the clue to what's inside. My husband will ask me the same question every year if I had been a good girl during the whole year, if I ate spinach.... then I may be given presents which I usually know what's inside!!!! Some weeks before the D day, I had made a market research throughout the cyberauktion or boutiques.
Christmas in Sweden ends on January 13th, at Knut's Day when we take out the Chrismas tree.
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