This year I celebrated my first cold Christmas! It was not quite a white Christmas, but it was still pretty damn cold!
The Dutch don’t normally celebrate on the 25th, as their main holiday is more the Sinterklaas on the 5th. But over time it does seem that they are embracing the holiday more and more. Children are usually happy as they often get presents on both Sinterklaas and Christmas. Fem’s folks don’t normally celebrate it, so they were kind enough to provide some presents for us so I could get something on Christmas morning.
I was glad with what Fem and I received and Fem’s parents really liked the Redcliffe Calendar given to them by my parents.
With the presents done it was on to one of the main events surrounding Christmas. The feasting!
Last year Fem and I were with Kasia’s Polish parents in Melbourne and we had a massive feed down there. Up here in Holland it’s no different. This leads me to conclude that no matter where you are in the world: On Christmas day you will get a massive feed!
We first has a massive Christmas lunch! All different types of bread with a large variety of toppings.
Then after a relaxing afternoon we moved onto a Christmas dinner!
This is a tradition in a lot of Dutch households. Basically you have a massive meat tray with lots of small cuts of different meat. You then grill them yourselves on the big grill in the middle of the table. All this is topped off with plenty of mayonnaise covered fries and capsicums and garlic breads (left over from lunch).
It was a massive feast, and since we had to cook the meat ourselves. It took at least 2 hours to go through. Which meant plenty of chatting and drinking and eating. As you can see from Auke’s belly below, we all had plenty to eat.
My belly was so full that night. It was clearly one of the largest meals I had all year! and it was great!
