Growing up in Finland, we would go to sauna before Christmas Eve dinner. After dinner, dad would go check the front door, and announce to us that Santa had dropped a bag of presents by the door. (Usually, according to dad, he was in too much of a hurry to come and visit us in the house).
Then we would open up the present, and play all night with our new toys...or at least until dad would take a breaker out (you could just unscrew the old breakers out of the box), and the lights did not work anymore, so we were forced to go to bed.
Since we had our sauna build this year, we decided to continue the Finnish tradition, and we heated it up before our annual Gamett Christmas Eve party.
The kids opened up their Christmas Eve presents, cozy pajamas. And then we all got cleaned up and relaxed in sauna, before heading to uncle marks house, where we enjoyed the family, good food, and our little Christmas concert. I made my traditional Finnish sweet bread, called Pulla and also a super yummy dessert, called Hello Dollies. My neighbor makes these and I decided to try them as well. Warning! If you have these around the house you will want to eat them all.
Hello Dolly
Melt a block (1/2 c) of butter in a 9 x 13 pan in oven.
Once the butter is melted, sprinkle it with
1 c graham cracker
1 c chocolate chips
1 c coconut flakes,
1 c butterscotch chips,
1 c of chopped pecans or almonds
1 c of chopped pecans or almonds
Top everything with a can of condensed milk
Cook it in the oven for 20 minutes or so in a 375 F.
Enjoy!
My husbands grandparents started the tradition of getting together for Christmas Eve for soups, sandwiches and dessert with potluck style, and they would finish the night with a family concert/talent show. The grandparents have passed away but we still carry on this wonderful tradition.
This year Markus played his own composition with piano.
Niko played Jingle Bell Rock with Jon Schmidt style.
Maija sang a Christmas Tree song,
and Kai announced that his talent was to be able to sleep anywhere, anytime.
After the evening came to an end we returned home, and before bed we read together the Christmas Story from Luke 2.
Before going to bed, we made sure to leave some milk and cookies to Santa...Christmas morning there were only crumbs left..
Before going to bed, we made sure to leave some milk and cookies to Santa...Christmas morning there were only crumbs left..
