Wishes from Slovenia

Here is our poster with best wishes for you.
To see and hear more click on the photos and two singing snowflakes.

Lucia

The Lucia procession sings carols. Do you know any?

Merry Christmas from Romania

A traditional Christmas carol , a present for you all:

Caută mai multe fişiere video ca acesta pe ORA de DIRIGENTIE

Traditions around Christmas

Every Sunday in Advent we light one candle, just as you do..

We also have electric lightholders in the windows, or big stars, and many families have a lot of electric lights in their gardens We also have a calender where we open one shutter every day from the 1st of December until Christmas Eve, the 24th.

On TV and in radio there are "calenders" too, and the calenders are made up by stories, one part for every day.

Lucia is a special day in Sweden. The 13th of December the Saint Lucia comes together with her maids, "starboys" and goblins. The Lucia procession sings Lucia songs and Christmas Carols. They also give out coffee, ginger bread and a special kind of bun, called "Lucia cat".

We have trained for our Lucia Procession for months. We will perform three times, for all the citizens in Grimsås on Sunday, for the school children on Monday morning, and for the big factory Nexans on Monday afternoon.

Elin is Lucia this year, and all girls from class 3 to class 6 take part of the performance. And so do three boys, Daniel is among them.

We´ll send you some pictures from our Lucia procession on Tuesday.

Friday the 18th we finish school.

The most important day for Swedish people is Christmas Eve.

The Christmas tree is decorated, and many other Christmas decorations in the house. ( Most common are small Father Christmas figures.)

At lunch time many families "dip in the saucepan". You dip bread in the clear soup you get when you cook the ham.

At 3 o´clock in the afternoon is an important time. Since many years TV sends "Donald Duck and his friends" - short cuts from Disney films.

In the evening it is time for the huge table with Christmas food -ham, meatballs, salmon, special sausages, herring, " Jansons temptation"and many other dishes.

And after that Sancta comes ( and we´ve got the real Sancta in Sweden- no mums or dads - we don´t understand what you mean :)) and gives gifts to everybody.

After that we eat sweets and cakes and we don´t feel well at all, actually....

Some people go to midnight mass, some people go to the early service at 7 on Chritmas day. Most people do not go to church at all - because we seem to have forgotten why we celebrate Christmas. That´s a real shame....

You asked how much money we raised on the market. About 400 euro. ( 4000 Swedish kronor)

We would like to go to Stockholm,Gothenburg.....we really haven´t decided yet.

Merry Christmas all of you! We meet again in 2010. We start school the 11th of January.

The concept Lussekatt had originally nothing to do with Lucia, but is etymologically traced to Lucifer, Ie the Devil. It was in Germany in the 1600s as the custom with Lussekatt arrived. The devil, in cat form, gave the child beating, while Jesus in the form of a child handed out brownies to the good children.[edit] To keep the shady devil away colored saffron buns with yellow saffron spice. The bright buns were scaring Saffron, ie Lucifer.[edit (from Swedish Wikipedia)

Answer from Slovenia: Christmas traditions

Yes, December is here and soon Christmas trees will be standing in our homes. In the photo you can already see some of our this year's school decorations. On 21st December there will be a Christmas choir concert at our school.
Our secretary says that before Christmas she does general home cleansing.
We are looking forward to the presents that we get from Santa who is really our mum and dad, it just looks like it's him.
This weekend many of us got small presents (mostly sweets and fruit) from St. Nicholas and at the end of the year there is another tradition of Father Frost which is similar to Father Christmas.





What do you eat for Christmas? We eat our traditional food potica. Do you remember it? Many in our class go to midnight mass on 24th December and we will have cribs under our Christmas trees.
We also light one candle every advent Sunday. On Friday our 6th graders made their own Christmas table decorations. We did the same last year.








Your market looks very interesting. How much money did you raise? Where would you like to go at the end of class 6?
We wish you all the best!!!

Christmas traditions

It is December and soon it is Christmas. Christmas markets have already started on many places. In Grimsås there was a small market last Sunday, the first Sunday in Advent. Our class had a lottery on the market, just to get money so we can make a small journey before we split up in the end of class six.

There were one hundred prices in the lottery.

What traditions do you have when it is Christmas time?