Here in Norway there are many holidays. Most of them are worldwide holidays, but there are some unique ones as well. The first holiday of the year is New year. On New year everything is closed, except hospitals and other important facilities. In Norway they fire up fireworks during the evening and the night, and often it can also be during the next morning.
The second holiday of the year is Easter. Easter is not on the same day every year and therefore a lot of other holidays are affected and also on movable dates. Here Easter Sunday and Easter Monday are holidays and there is no school or work. In Norway they make kids believe that the Easter bunny will come during the day and leave some chocolate. Norwegians also tend to leave their houses to go to their secondary houses. These houses are usually in the woods or next to a lake. In my family, we used to stay at home and eat things that we don’t usually eat, like duck. We also used to go looking for chocolates in the garden after the Easter bells had passed because French kids are told that Easter bells fly over your house and drop chocolate.
Before Easter there are some days that are celebrated by some and when there is no school or work. The first is Maundy Thursday and is not really celebrated by many, except maybe by a few religious people in the country. Then you have Good Friday where, like Maundy Thursday, it is not really celebrated. In my family at least we celebrate it. That whole day we don't eat meat and always eat fish. Apart from that, there is not really anything to celebrate.
Moving on, we are in May and it’s the month where there are the most holidays and the least school for kids. The first one is actually the first of May and is the workers international day. There is no work or school that day all over the world. Then we have the constitution day of Norway on the seventeenth of May. This is because Norway became an independent country on the seventeenth of May 1814. Often we don’t go to school one or two days before and also after the seventeenth.
Ascension day is the next of a series of holidays. This holiday takes place forty days after Easter. It’s a celebration for the ascension of Christ after his death. Ten days after ascension day is Whit Sunday and the next day is Whit Monday. I don’t really know what you celebrate on these days.
After May there are no holidays until Christmas day. Here in Norway people don’t celebrate Christmas on the 25th of December. They celebrate Christmas on the 24th of December. That night they eat pork belly, lamb ribs, potatoes, Christmas sausages and rice cream. This is the traditional Christmas dinner, but it’s not what most Norwegians eat on Christmas day. What most Norwegians eat is actually a frozen store bought pizza called Grandiosa. I don’t really understand why, but if it’s good then I might understand. In my family we eat a lot of appetizers and then we eat monkfish with rice. For the dessert we have a French dessert called Christam log, which is a cake formed like a log. It can come in many different flavors. Norwegian kids open Christmas presents in the evening on the 24th. We open our presents in the morning on the 25th. That was every holiday in Norway. I wish you all a happy New year and a great year in 2022. See you all in 2022.
- Bastien Champay - Norway