Monday, December 04, 2006

How I want my Christmas to be...

Today's page for my Christmas journal was all about how you want your ideal Christmas to be. I'm very lucky as my Christmas is already how I want it to be and I can't think of anything I want to change, so that's what I have journalled about.


And a close-up of the journaling so you can (hopefully!) read it too.


Now I think I might have some explaining to do. "Donald Duck on Christmas???" you're all thinking, right? LOL! Okay let me explain something about a typical Swedish Christmas. First of all, the day you celebrate on, give/receive gifts, eat your special Christmas food etc is on Christmas Eve (24th of December). 25th of December (Christmas Day) is no more special that the 26th (Boxing Day) is in any other country.

Now onto Donald Duck (!!) and what that's all about. LOL! I'm not sure how to explain this for you to understand how HUGE this is, how many people watch this and how important it is to so many people. But anyway, every year since 1959 (!) we have an hour of "Donald Duck and his friends wishes you a Merry Christmas". 15:00 in the afternoon of Christmas Eve. EVERYONE watches this, it IS part of Christmas. This program is almost always in the top 3 programmes watched over the whole year, every year, in Sweden. Most of the program is the same every year (short cartoons with Santa, Mickey, Donald, etc).

So yes you know it by heart (think about my poor parents who have seen EVERY episode - ever!!)...and some people prefer to "watch" it by having a nice little sleep on the sofa. A few years ago the contract for the program had run out and Swedish TV was not going to renew it. This caused such a MASSIVE uproar with the Swedish public that they were forced to keep showing it. So there you have the explaination of Donald Duck and now you know what millions of Swedes do at 15:00 on Dec 24th...every year LOL!

2 comments:

Heather said...

LOL - I loved reading about the Swedish tradition of watching Donald Duckat 3pm on Christmas Eve. Is it dubbed into Swedish?

When I send a card to my friend in Gothenburg I'm going to ask her if she's one of the millions who watches it. :)

Eleni Gratsia said...

WOW! LOL!! and more LOL!!! Love the page and your explanation of Donald Duck!!! I actually have that DVD!!! :D