The Christmas Season in Scandinavia

Molly Carter
Dec 28, 2018
3 min read

Thoughts on My First Christmas Away From Home in Sweden and Denmark

Hi everyone and welcome back to Travels With Molly! I cannot believe that I just celebrated my first Christmas season away from home and what an exciting and new adventure it has been!

Starting off, I love Malmö in Christmas time! It is nice and chilly, all the Christmas lights are up, people are in better moods, and my friends and I went ice skating. While I was a little sad that I would not be coming home for Christmas, I didn't let it stop me as I,

1) Watched a few Christmas movies (Elf and the Santa Clause)

2) FaceTimed home

3) Had a few more fikas with friends

4) Traveled around Sweden with my friend Wartha

and 5), knew my mom was coming soon!

Luckily enough, my mom was able to come spend Christmas with me in Scandinavia!!! Like me, this was her first time to Sweden and Denmark and I had a blast showing her around my new home! She arrived from the U.S. to Copenhagen on Christmas Eve (Dec. 24) where we went straight to the hotel, dropped all of our stuff off, set up our Christmas tree (yes, we had an IKEA Christmas tree) and went around the corner to Tivoli Gardens. One of the reasons my mom was so excited to come to Scandinavia (other than seeing me, of course) was to go to all of the Christmas markets. While most of the Christmas markets were closed (see note below), Tivoli has many stores that sell Christmas-related items like ornaments. I don't quite know how we did it but we were able to spend many hours in Tivoli buying gifts for each other, ourselves, and my dad and sister back in the US.

Note: Most of the Christmas Markets in Copenhagen and Malmö open in late November to early December and are usually over by Christmas (Dec. 24).

One thing we quickly learned is that even though Copenhagen is a large city with many tourists, almost everything (restaurants included) is closed on Dec. 24. Luckily we had someone at the hotel explain this to us and got us reservations at the restaurant in our hotel or we would be stuck eating McDonalds (which we had to do the next day...). The reason for this is that most, if not all, of Scandinavia practices Christmas Day (presents, Christmas meal, etc.) on Dec. 24 and not the 25 like in the US. In trying to keep up with the customs of my new home, after dinner, my mom and I opened a couple of presents on the 24 before falling asleep.

The next day, Dec. 25, turned out to be another very busy day of opening up presents, having Christmas brunch in our hotel room (Kanelbullars/cinnamon buns and mimosas!), FaceTiming my family back home, and having my friend Wartha show us around Copenhagen! Much to my surprise, there were a decent amount of people out on the streets in Copenhagen that day and we ran into one of my classmates from Sweden! The rest of the day consisted of us touring Copenhagen (seeing Amalienburg and the Little Mermaid statue) and trying to eat at Wagamama's (an amazing Japanese inspired chain restaurant), which ended up with us eating at McDonalds as the only place open as our choice of food!

After the fun and festivities of Christmas, I had the special experience to be able to show my mom around my new home of Malmö! While in Malmö, I was able to show her a little bit of what my life is like in Sweden by taking her to my grocery store, favorite coffee shop, my dorm, my school, and she was able to meet some of my friends who were still in town. Finally, before she left to go back home, we got to go on one more adventure together (which I'll talk about in next week's blog post), to Stockholm!!