Christmas will be different this year. My mum is coming to the Netherlands to spend Christmas with us. My boyfriend’s mum is joining us as well so it will be four of us – the more the merrier.
This year I am honoured to make Slovakian Christmas and introduce part of my culture to the Dutch people I care about. My mum and I will be hopefully starting a new tradition: Christmas abroad.
I started preparations for Christmas two weeks ahead; as per the tradition, we deep cleaned the house. It took us all weekend. We cleaned the living room, pulled sofas away hoovered behind them, cleaned windows from inside. We emptied all of the cupboards and cleaned the insides in the kitchen. The oven was deep cleaned too. It was hard work to clean up three bedrooms, two bathrooms, kitchen and spacious living room. I am good with keeping the house as clean as possible during the year (we have a cat now so it is harder) but for the holidays I wanted to go a bit extra.
And by extra I mean I actually baked! It is only four of us so I didn’t want to make too much but I felt that something homemade should be on the table.
The recipe I used for the gingerbread cookies is in Slovakian language because these are traditional Slovakian cookies. I have never made these before and I am very impressed with the outcome. I also decorated the cookies myself and I think I discovered mine my hidden talent! I am so excited about these cookies I am actually planning to do one more batch today and decorate them as this was great fun! My mum brought a poppy cake from Slovakia which is also a very traditional Slovakian Christmas cake. I also made chocolate brownies covered in white chocolate and bought various biscuits.
We decorated the Christmas tree with my boyfriend. This was a very first year we have done this together and it felt really special. We made a short video as I wanted to keep this memory forever. I will post this video on IGTV if you are curious, go to my Instagram to have a look. The colours of our three are gold and red and all of the decorations are plastic, not glass because I was worried if Luna (the cat) will find them amusing and wants to play with them. I thought it would be safer if they are not breakable. Luckily, she is not too bothered by the Christmas tree decorations she does like the presents under the tree and loves to chew on them though.
My mum and I are making Christmas lunch and Christmas dinner according to our own tradition that I described in the previous Christmas article. The “kapustnica” soup will be served for lunch and the red cabbage with meat and “knedlik” for dinner. We are planning to have dinner on 24th of December and open the Christmas presents and enjoy the evening talking to each other and listening to some Christmas songs, maybe watch a movie. We usually watch Slovakian stories and movies but I think I will try to introduce my mum and my boyfriend's mum to each other as much as possible. I will be interpretuer this evening as my mum doesn't speak English so this will be a little challenge for me.
I am hoping that this Christmas will be magical as it is the first one for me in the Netherlands and very first one with my boyfriend and his family. I enjoy everything this year in a different way but I am making the best of it.
What else can I say before the end of the article but: Merry Christmas everyone! Let it be a peaceful and happy one spend with your family and loved once around you.
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