Languages – Page 22 – SJB Teaching

December 10, 2012April 14, 2018

How do they celebrate Christmas in Denmark?

This is a guest post from Anne Christine Jensen of RS Globalization.

Some of the most typically Danish Christmas traditions in December are: almost all families have a decoration with a “kalenderlys” (calendar candle) on which we count the days until Christmas Eve.

It’s also a tradition that the families have an Advent decoration with four candles – one for each of the four Sundays until Christmas.

Each evening in December it’s also a tradition for the children (and even some adults) to watch “julekalender” (a special “made for Christmas” series) on the television. There are 24 episodes, one for each day until Christmas Eve. Most years there is also a special made “julekalender” for adults.

In Denmark we celebrate Christmas Eve, the 24th of December. Often families meet in the afternoon and drink coffee together and “hygger sig” (have fun together). In many families it’s a tradition to go to church to a worship in the afternoon too.

In the afternoon it’s also a tradition to see the “Disneys Juleshow: Fra Alle Os til Alle Jer“ (“The Disney Christmas Show: From All of Us to All of You”). The show always shows the same shorts and some clips from films and at the end of the show a sneak peak of new movies or recently released Disney movies are revealed.

In the evening the families eat the well-prepared Christmas dinner together. It’s different from family to family what the traditional Christmas dinner consists of, but some of the most common dinners include one of these meats: “flæskesteg” (pork), duck, goose or turkey. With that we eat white potatoes, sugar glazed sweet potatoes, cabbage and gravy. For dessert the traditional dish is “ris à la mande”, which is cold rice porridge with whipped cream, chopped almonds and warm cherry sauce. One whole almond is put into the rice porridge on one of the plates and the person that gets this almond receives a “mandelgave” (= a present) –it’s often chocolate.

After the dinner and a little pause, the families get ready to dance around the tree. Everyone joins hands in a circle around the tree and while walking around the tree, we sing traditional Christmas songs. When we have finished with the dancing and singing, we start getting the presents. In families with small children “Santa Claus” comes with the presents, but when the children are a bit older, the present are normally just under the Christmas tree and are delegated by a person from the family.

Thanks again to Anne Christine for this post. Anne works at RS_Globalization Services, which provides multilingual translation and localization services to SMEs and corporate clients. RS_Globalization Services is EN15038 certified.

December 7, 2012July 5, 2013

How do they celebrate Christmas in France?

This is a guest post from Caroline Skudder who works as an English teacher at the Université Stendhal-Grenoble.

Christmas is a special and magical time of the year. Both adults and children look forward to it for different reasons: children for the tons of presents they get and adults for the fine food and chocolates they are going to eat. Both Christmas eve and Christmas day are celebrated. It is often the opportunity for couples and families to spend one of these days at one family’s and the other at the other family’s so everybody is happy. Father Christmas often comes two or three times: in the evening of Christmas eve (at one set of grandparents’) , in the morning of Christmas day (at home) and at lunch time of Christmas day (at the other set of grandparents’).

The Christmas tree is often put up at the start of December and all the family set to work to decorate it. It often ends up being a little unbalanced but the children are proud of their work. Recently, there has been the fashion for outside electrical lights to decorate the house and neighbours often compete for the best decorated house.

Some families go to midnight mass and watch a nativity play played by children.

Tables are set up. Often several old tables are put next to each other to host everybody and we struggle to find a chair for everyone. We decorate them with Christmas table cloths and bits and pieces.

Christmas is about eating refined and delicious food you do not get to eat in the year. Several members of the family prepare a dish for the meal. The whole evening from 7 to past midnight is spent eating. There are several starters (there can be up to 3 or 4, for instance smoked salmon, prawns, snails or frog legs, foie gras), two main courses (for instance Turkey and Chestnuts or duck or poultry), the traditional cheeses and the Christmas logs. We often have enough food for the rest of the week!

Joyeux Noël (Happy Christmas)

If you want to learn French and you are based in Birmingham, you can contact me via my website for private French lessons.

December 4, 2012

How do they celebrate Christmas in Germany?

This is a guest post from Rainer Schlötterer of RS_Globalization Services.

In Germany almost all families decorate their homes with an “Adventskranz” (advent wreath). This is a wreath most often made from twigs (fir tree, spruces) with four candles and often also decorated. The candles are lit on every Sunday before Christmas starting with 1 candle in the first week up until all 4 candles are lit on the last Sunday before Christmas day (25 December).

In the weeks before Christmas most families bake a lot of Christmas cookies. The children may help in the kitchen and have a lot of fun cutting cookies in all sorts of different shapes or nibbling at the fresh pastry. All-time favourites are the vanilla crescents and the “Spitzbuben” (“rascal cookies”). If you are too lazy to bake them yourself you may also buy them on one of the numerous Christmas markets in every town and city where you can get all sorts of Christmas bits and pieces while enjoying a mug of mulled wine.

When finally the children have opened the last door of their advent calendar on 24 December, Christmas eve is only hours away. Families usually go to church in the afternoon to celebrate the “holy night” and then come back with the children to find that the “Christkind” (Christ child) was here and put presents under the Christmas tree. This is a magical moment for the children although usually they may be a bit disappointed to have missed the “Christkind” once again as in the years before.

Families then traditionally would play and sing Christmas songs and have a special Christmas eve dinner if the children are not too busy unwrapping presents and play with the new toys. There is no traditional dinner for Christmas eve. Some families have a fondue or raclette when the children are a bit older. But roast, trout, home-made pizza or any other special meal will also do.

On the first Christmas day (25 December) it is time for visits of relatives, grandparents, etc. Now the traditional Christmas meal is goose which is roasted and served with delicious dumplings, gravy and red cabbage. If you find goose a bit too much or if your family is smaller, then also duck will do.

Boxing day (26 December) is also celebrated and is another chance for visiting family and relatives. There is no special Christmas dinner for boxing day but why not have another roast in the oven.

Many thanks to Rainer for this guest post. Rainer is the owner of RS_Globalization Services, which provides multilingual translation and localization services to SMEs and corporate clients. RS_Globalization Services is EN15038 certified.

December 1, 2012April 14, 2018

How do they celebrate Christmas in Greece?

This is a guest post from Andrea Michael of Olive Translations.

If there’s one thing the Greeks know how to do it’s celebrate an event in style and Christmas is no exception.

The festivities begin before Christmas on 6^th December (St Nicolas’ Day ) when children roam the streets with drums and triangles singing carols or ‘kalanda’ as they’re called in Greek. These carols have been handed down from generation to generation from Byzantine times.

Going from door to door, it’s a nice way to sing carols and children earn a few Euros (which in this economic climate is no bad thing!)

Greece being a Christian country, tradition and religion dictate many of the events that take place and Christmas is no exception. There is no doubt that Christmas is about celebrating Jesus.

On Christmas Eve, a bread called ‘Christopsomo’, literally ‘Christ Bread’ is homemade and a sign of the cross is imprinted before it goes in the oven. On Christmas Day, the bread is sliced and each piece is given to a family member.

Christmas Day itself is usually spent in church in the morning then home for lunch with the family. Whilst turkey can be bought at supermarkets due to the influx of tourists, most families will have a leg of lamb or pork roasting on a barbeque spit cooking for hours. This is usually served with a traditional ‘spanakopita’ or spinach-cheese pie and lots of vegetables and rice.

For dessert there are two varieties of cakes ‘melomakarouna’ and ‘kourapiedes’ which are normally baked in large quantities. ‘Melomakarouna’ are semolina, cinnamon biscuits covered in honey, and ‘kourapiedes’ are rosewater and butter cookies coated with powdered sugar that are normally served on New Year’s but are often eaten earlier as they are too good to resist!

All this good food makes for partying and it’s not uncommon for music to be blaring all night long whilst everybody dances around their houses and into the street with neighbours joining in just for fun.

Gifts are not actually exchanged on Christmas Day, but are given on 1^st January. Things then wind down but not before the Epiphany on 6^th January. This is the date the Greek Orthodox Church celebrates Jesus’ baptism when he was a man.

The Epiphany is also known as ‘The Blessing of the Waters’. All over Greece, priests throw a cross which he has blessed into the sea ( or lake or river) and the male members of the family will dive into the freezing waters to be the first to get the cross. Whoever comes out first holding the cross is said to have good luck in the coming year.

If you happen to be in Greece and want to wish someone a ‘Merry Christmas’ it’s ‘Kala Christouyenna!’.

Many thanks again to Andrea for this guest post. Olive Translations, based in Birmingham, is a translation company with a difference. Certified to the highest European Translation Standard, EN 15038 and with an ISO 9001:2008 Certified Quality Management System in place, when we say Quality; we mean it. Let us be your Partner for the provision of serious, quality translations and we can work together to tailor make a service and price that’s right for you. For a quote please email: info@olivetranslations.com

November 25, 2012October 4, 2019

A Pantomime with a Difference

There’s little that says “Christmas” more than a pantomime (except Noddy Holder shouting “IT’S CHRISTMAS” of course) and last night I went to a pantomime for the first time in years. This though, was a panto with a difference. It took place at my local deaf club, and all the cast were deaf so the whole thing was done in sign language.

Ian and I were really unsure what to expect when we bought our tickets and our biggest worry was that we wouldn’t understand any of it. We needn’t have worried: the cast were brilliant. Their comedy timing was much better than many trained actors, and because pantomime and BSL are both so visual, the combination worked really well and we actually understood very well.

They also seemed to have thought about the fact that lots of people who went would be people like us, who were learning BSL and who thought this would be a great opportunity to practise. They included some elements of teaching/explaining new vocabulary, but because they built it so cleverly into the plot it didn’t seem contrived at all.

There was a group of interpreters there for non-signers, but we found them to be more of a distraction than a help – sometimes their words didn’t match the signs; sometimes their words didn’t even match the signer for example they were saying the Queen’s words while the King was signing.

I can’t criticise them because it takes years of training to be a BSL interpreter, and interpreting a play is a very specialised area within the field of BSL interpreting, and these were just volunteers. To make their job even more difficult, I think that only the plot of the play had been decided; the performance itself had a very ad-lib feel to it so they wouldn’t have known the exact signs they had to interpret until they saw them. Taking all that into account, I think they did a great job.

If I could offer a little constructive feedback, it would be this: often less is more. Interpret the signs by all means, but facial expressions and actions can be understood by everybody so statements such as “I’m opening the door now to see if anybody is listening”, and “I’m sitting in the chair and wriggling about a bit because it’s not comfortable” could be dropped, giving more time to decide how to interpret the actual signing parts.

We really enjoyed it though, and would definitely go to another one. However, next time, I would take ear-plugs for a more authentic experience. I would recommend it to anybody who is looking for something a bit different to do. There’s another chance to see it on Tuesday 11th December in Dudley.