It's Christmas, But Not As We Know It

From keeping carp in a Czech bathtub to shooting ptarmigan for the Icelandic table, we look at festive traditions and customs across the continent

- Ettie Neil-Gallacher

How we decide to celebrate Christmas is generally determined by our childhoods. We either ape family tradition or rail against it. Just as chocolate Advent calendars were Christmas kryptonite when I was little, so my own children are subjected to tasteful German ones imported at tremendous expense when they’d much rather gorge themselves into a Cadbury’s-induced coma. But our festivities fall within certain very British parameters; and while we share certain traditions with our European neighbours, they have some different, and perhaps more expansive, celebrations of their own, marking Advent and various feasts right up to – and even beyond – Epiphany itself.

Many readers of The Field will be familiar with how Christmas is celebrated in the most frequented holiday destinations in Western Europe: from the galette des rois and leaving shoes out for Père Nöel in France to the joyous celebration of the feasts of the Immaculate Conception and the Epiphany in Spain and Italy. Perhaps it’s the dark evenings, or the cold, but in those countries a little further north, we find a rich source of festive tradition and inspiration. To follow, are a few of the more unusual and interesting.

NORDIC COUNTRIES