Friday, May 26, 2006

Kristi Himmelfarts

It's another long weekend for us here as the country celebrates Kristi Himmelfarts day. This one is in honor of the day when Jesus flew up to Heaven and once again very few prayers are being said.

Monday, May 15, 2006

Another Holiday

Denmark is a place that always seems to be on holiday. There was whatever happened around Christmas, then the kids got a week off school in February, then there was a week off for Easter and depending on where you live you may or may not get May 1st off as some kind of workers protest day.

Last Friday was another one of the these special days. St. Bededag to be exact. I have heard a few different explanations for this but basically what it boils down to is an old king taking all the saint's days and combining them into one big prayer day. (This means that they used to have even more holidays!) I'm told that his idea was to save money. It felt a little strange to be in this super materialistic part of the world and hear everyone talking about the upcoming holy day but true to Danish culture there was very little praying done.

There were, however, many fine picnics to be enjoyed and my household spent the afternoon by the sea at Charlottenlund. It was a pretty big shindig that was organized to celebrate the end of term for my roomate's school. They had the usual barbque but they also invited people from one of the local museums to teach us some traditional games. This museum is all about toys and games and it turns out that the really old ones that they are trying to save from extinction are what we now call cooperative games.

So the next time you play a cooperative game remember that you are saving Danish culture.

Friday, May 05, 2006

The Danish Birthday Song

I dag er det Larissas fødselsdag
HURRA HURRA HURRA
Hun sikrer sig en gave for
Som hun har ønsket sig i år
Med dejlig chokolade og
kager til

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Happy Ridvan

For the past 12 days we in Denmark have been celebrating the holiday of Ridvan along with the rest of the Baha'i world. Ridvan marks the time when it was revealed that Baha'u'llah was a messenger of God and it is also the time when we elect the Spiritual Assemblies.

In Denmark every holiday or special event seems to be an excuse for cake and this was no exception. On Saturday we had a big celebration that included a performance by the dance group and was followed by many cakes.

Chocolate is also very important here but that is more of an everyday thing.