Hi all! Thanks so much to Jana for asking me to be part of her Christmas event! :) I love the season!
Let me introduce myself: I’m Daisy from Between the Pages and The Broke and the Bookish, and I call Nijmegen, a city in the Netherlands my home. Which is useful information considering Jana asked me to talk about how we celebrate Christmas here ;)
We actually have two gift giving events in December here. One is Christmas and another is Sinterklaas (which another Dutch Blogger, Debby @ Snuggly Oranges, explains in this post), Sinterklaas is celebrated on December 5th every year and there are actually a lot of Dutch people who don’t exchange gifts for Christmas. But because my brother was REALLY afraid of Zwarte Piet (Sinterklaas’ helper), we’ve always celebrated Christmas and got gifts from Santa, which always sorta made us the odd one out, but I totally love it!
I actually only found out last year that you guys in the US only have Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, here in The Netherlands we have the first day of Christmas and second day of Christmas and both are national holidays. Which comes in handy if more than one set of parents is expecting you for a Christmas dinner ;) I’d always thought it was the same worldwide!
I love Christmas. It’s my absolute favourite holiday and I was really annoyed when I had to work the night shift on Christmas Eve last year. I just love the feeling of sitting around with the family, exchanging gifts, having a pretty Christmas tree in the house with all the little lights and eating lots of yummy food. Cause let’s be honest, there’s always a lot of food going around. So by the end of the second day of Christmas, I’ve usually gone into a serious food coma. One thing that also happens here is that on the second day of Christmas, people go to clubs or bars after dinner to party. I’ve never really been a fan, cause after all the food and lazing around I don’t really want to stand around and put ut with drunk people, but a lot of people like it.
I’m one of those people who want everything to be special for Christmas. I can spend ages planning my outfits (I LOVE putting on a pretty dress for Christmas!) and what to eat if we’re making something (though ‘gourmetten’ is really popular in Holland as well, which is basically sitting around the table with a grill in the middle and everyone can put whatever tiny piece of meat they want to eat on it) and definitely what books to bring with me to read in between all the food and gifts and games and such! Some perfect Christmas reads for me were Anna and the French Kiss and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. I will forever link both books to Christmas and love them even more for it!
I guess that when it comes down to it, Christmas for me in the Netherlands isn’t all that different from the rest of the world: it’s filled with family time, lots of food, good books and just the Christmas spirit of being nice to each other. I love how everyone is cheerful and dressed nicely and just relaxing!
I’m getting all warm and fuzzy feelings just writing about this! I want to wish you all a very merry Christmas in advance! And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to light all the candles in my home and feel cozy and Christmas-y :)
I’ve always been privileged with my family, since we celebrated Sinterklaas + Christmas when I was younger. Now we spend most time on Christmas and it’s one of my favourite holidays! I just love all the lights, the trees and the songs <3 I also like to dress up nicely! It's one of the few days in the years I put on a dress (although I'm trying to change that a little)
This sounds so wonderful :) Thank you for sharing about your Christmas, Daisy! I’m the same way about it, I just want everything to be perfect and special. Merry Christmas!
So nice you’re into the holidays – I, too, love them. Sitting around the Christmas tree is always fun. Love the picture too.