Christmas Eve (a.k.a. FINNISH CHRISTMAS)

The Christmas Goat, or Joulupukki. The name of Father Christmas in Finland, literally: Yule Buck.

Only in Finland .... where their Father Christmas was a goat that frighten the kids and didn't give presents but demanded them, or else he would cause havoc.

It is an old pagan tradition in Finland that finally got a Christian flavor and now the goat is cute and made from straw or wood and they are still around everywhere!

For Christmas, Greg and I drove up to Kuopio to visit his Finnish Family, Junnu and Raili with their two children (19 and 16 year old Retta and Rosa).

I made lots of American goodies for them to try like cornbread dressing, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, double bean bean-dip (made from black beans and pinto beans), rice crispy treats. They usually don't have marshmallows here in Finland but I grabbed a bag at the store, Stockmans, when they had their New York State of Mind shopping days).

I also made several dozen sugar cookies cut in the form of stars and santas, and made my Mother's famous Cheese Ball. Which Greg tried to rename to Fromage Noel to give it a fancier name, but Greg honey we're from the countryside of Texas not the countryside of France and we like it that way!

Here is a picture of Junnu eating most of the Cheese Ball in one bite

Junnu & Raili were very proud to have bought a turkey for me and then put me on the spot on how to cook the darn thing.

I started laughing because as much as I cook, I have NEVER cooked a turkey!

I leave that up to my Mom who knows how to make one delicious and perfect every time.

Turkey is not really common in Finland, where they usually have a ham crusted with mustard and clove. I don't think Raili was very pleased to have spent a lot of money on a turkey, only to find out I didn't know how to cook it. YIKES!

Greg came to the rescue and suggested the Internet to find a recipe, thank goodness.

Here is the turkey and all its glory. I am sure you have heard me complain about how cramped and small everything in Finland is, well their ovens are no different. In fact, most of my pans and cookie sheets are too big to fit in the little ovens they have here.

I found out that if you have a house with a fireplace that this is used as an oven to get around the fact of having a mini oven.

Here is a picture of Raili putting the turkey in the fireplace stove where the heat below would cook the turkey, which I thought was pretty cool.

Since Finland had not received hardly any snow in December, we were wondering if it would be a White Christmas. Right before it turned night time (3:00 pm) it started to snow!! Yea a White Christmas after all.

J & R talked about how the sky would turn blue right before the sun went down and for a moment it seemed really blue, quite and still outside; very beautiful and peaceful.

Christmas in Finland is celebrated on Christmas Eve not Christmas Day. On Christmas Eve morning we started the day off with some rice porridge, which was really nice and plain tasting.

Raili also had prepared two Christmas desserts, joulutorttu and a spiced cake. Here is Greg pretending that he is not interested in grabbing a bite or two. He loves the joulutorttu, which is basically puff pastry cut out to make a star with plum jelly in the middle, sprinkled with powdered sugar.

Yeah, who are you kidding Greg with your arms up in the air like you aren't doing anything wrong ... I see that sweet-tooth twinkle in your eye.

Next, Junnu insisted that I go out to the forest and pick the Christmas tree I wanted for Christmas and then to cut it down. The nice thing about growing up on 10 acres of country side in Weatherford, Texas is that my Dad use to take us out to do this exact same thing.

So I have had a chance to experience this and told Junnu "Thanks but I have already done this". But as I was saying he insisted, and so here we are putting the tree in the holder that actually sits outside.

As you can see from this photo I am really "helping out".... thanks Rosa for doing the whole job for me... hehe.

CHRISTMAS DINNER: Before dinner is served you partake in the Christmas sauna. We sang Christmas carols in the sauna and enjoyed a cold cider drink afterwards. Now on to Christmas dinner, which included the following. Chanterelle mushroom soup as a starter. "Mushroom soup, anyone?"

Then comes the fish.
Usually all types of herring are served but this time only salmon was served which included: hot smoked salmon, cold smoked salmon and gravalax, which is salt cured salmon.

Salmon fish roe was also served along with the fish as well. To eat the fish roe you put small boiled new potatoes on your plate, with a side of sour cream, some chopped onion and the roe is stacked on top. This was actually really nice and I enjoyed trying all the different types of salmon.

Next, the Christmas ham and turkey was served. By this point I was already starting to be rather full. Of course, I couldn't pass on the turkey after they went to so much trouble. It was delicious and so was the ham.

I was really full after the second meat course and at this point Raili starts bringing out the Christmas sides Rosolli (a vegetable salad of beetroot, carrot, potato and gherkins),

Rutabaga or Swede Casserole (lanttulaatikko) , Carrot Casserole (porkkanalaatikko), and Sweetened Potato Casserole (imellytetty perunalaatikko), along with my corn bread dressing.

SO MUCH YUMMY FOOD. See, at our house we have Christmas dinner around lunch time 2:00 or 3:00 pm. This gives us plenty of time to eat and then come back later for the stuff you couldn't stuff in your face the first time around.

By the time we had our Finnish Christmas dinner (after skating on the frozen lake, cutting down trees, tree decorating, and Christmas sauna) it was already pretty late and I had to pass on a lot of the sides, but I really liked the Swede Casserole which tasted like sauteed cauliflower, it was really different but good!

We topped off our Christmas dinner with glögi, which is mulled wine and went and plopped ourselves down in the living room to see if Santa would come and visit.

In Finland, Santa doesn't come in the middle of the night to leave presents. He comes out in broad daylight and even knocks on the door. Usually the people in the countryside of Finland get their next door neighbor to come over dressed as Santa and to hand out presents. His words are always the same: "Are there any well behaved children here?" Naturally, in every home there are only good children and they all receive presents.

I was glad to see that the scary Christmas Goat is gone and now is replaced by Santa and his helper, even if we disagreed where Santa came from.

I say the North Pole and of course they claim Santa lives in Lapland, the upper part of Finland where the reindeer live. A big tourist theme park has even sprouted in northern Finland called "Christmas Land". This is near to where they say Santa Claus lives and people from the UK and Japan visit and send letters to Santa in Finland.

Greg told me to let them have this one thing.... but I'm not sure I can ;-)

You can't see much in this video but you will hear the Finnish song that sings hello to the Joulupukki