Christmas in Europe
Christmas turns Europe into a happy wonderland. The English dream of snow, the Germans go market-mad and the Spanish extend the holiday season and make their children wait until 6 January, Three Kings Day, before the presents arrive. If you’re visiting any of the Villages during the Christmas period – to do some last minute present buying or to catch the post-Christmas bargains – head into the nearby cities to enjoy the regional quirks of this international festival that the Europeans celebrate louder and prouder than most.
The Christmas bug hits London hard, with weeks of office parties, kitsch pantomimes and carol services across the capital, including those at the Royal Albert Hall, taking place this year between 12–24 December. Preparing themselves for yet another disappointing Christmas season with no snow, Londoners skate in circles around artificial ice-rinks, some outside the capital’s most famous landmarks, including the Natural History Museum, the London Eye and Somerset House. Then, finally, comes Christmas Day, the focus of it all. Families gather for a giant lunch, served with piles of turkey, roast potatoes and cranberry sauce, before the whole family collapses around the TV to watch the Queen’s annual televised speech.
In Dublin, the Irish treat Christmas with much the same gusto at the Brits, with bright lights lining the River Liffey and the city’s population attending mass, en masse. Boxing Day in London can be a relatively quiet affair, but its Irish equivalent, St Stephen’s Day, is lively, with revellers wrapping up warm and heading down to Leopardstown Racecourse, just south of the city, for the annual St Stephen’s Day races.
In Italian Catholic tradition, Christmas Eve is a day of abstinence from meat. So, to make up for it, the Italians tuck into a celebratory banquet that usually consists of piles and piles of seafood. The following day meat comes back to the table with a vengeance; delicacies include zampone, pig’s foot filled with spiced mincemeat and cotechino, a sausage made from pig’s intestines, also stuffed with spicy mincemeat. These sit side by side with more traditional Italian dishes, such as liver pâté crostinis and tortellini. Milan’s equivalent to the Christmas market is Oh bej! Oh bej!, an annual fair that joins the city’s Christmas celebrations with those for the Milan’s patron saint Sant Ambrogio. The fair’s stalls are a good place to pick up some stocking fillers while wandering around drinking mulled wine and eating roast chestnuts.
The Spanish traditionally eat late and on Christmas day they eat later than usual. To justify the wait, they lay on a spread larger than most. Some people roast a turkey, although most cook lamb or pork and sometimes lobster, as well as pâtés and cheeses and hams. Sweet marzipans and nougats, especially turrón, finish everything off sometime in the early hours of the morning. In Barcelona, Christmas feasts include a warming stew, escudella I carn d’olla, which generally consists of whatever is available and bubbles away throughout the day. This hot broth is particularly welcome to the contestants in the annual Christmas Day swim, this year in its ninety-first year, which sees 250 people racing 200 metres in the freezing cold water of the Port of Barcelona.
Elsewhere in Europe, Christmas markets dominate proceedings, especially in Germany and Belgium where some of the larger cities have two or three – Cologne has no fewer than seven! These markets are stocked full of sweet German Christmas goods including fruitcakes and Christstollen, marzipan pastries and Lebkuchen, a century-old gingerbread-like treat, all washed down with a pint of German beer or mulled wine. The French meanwhile bring in Christmas Day with réveillon, a lengthy dinner of oysters, foie gras, turkey with chestnuts and a bottle or two of champagne, which is held the night before the big day.
Wherever you are in Europe at Christmas, you’ll never be far from some festive fun and feasts, and frost if not snow.
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20-12-2011
