Danish Royal Family Christmas: 2024 -


If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
Muhler, hereditarytitles …

My mother is now too old to make the plum puddings/plum duffs so she buys a little canned commercial one.

But we grew up with her making at least two, some years three.

The pudding clothes are still available to buy from the supermarket, so making your own is still popular I guess.

They need to be made around September … the mixture tied up in the cloth and then boiled in water for hours.

You then hang them from hooks in the ceiling to dry out until Christmas … to prevent mould.

Everyone in the house has a go at stirring the mixture … hard work because of the density … but you get to make a wish as you stir.

When our coins were silver you would stir in thrupence and sixpence pieces … it is not safe with modern coins … then people would be delighted to find money in their bowl.

On Christmas morning the pudding goes back into boiling water to heat up for serving.

Very rich, nowadays too much for a lot of my family but we have a little bit for tradition.

Other desserts are also less popular like trifle, but always served, and the pavlova has no trouble being eaten.

The “plum” is more about the dried fruit used, than actual plums. Some have orange peel, whisky or brandy added etc. a very dense, rich thing.

You need to pour cream or custard over it in the bowl to break the richness a bit.

(Making them a couple of months early allows the flavours to develop.)
 
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Thanks for sharing the recipe, sounds very complicated and lots of preparations are needed. What is "trifle" and "pavlova"?
I fear we are going off topic, maybe somebody can open a new thread about " Christmas Dinners in different countries"? I love to cook, it would be interesting to learn
 
Plum pudding is so very British and I assume that all British influenced countries or former colonies of the British have kept certain customs food included. Each country does have their own traditions.

I still don't know how to make plum pudding, is it really made out of plums? i guess each country in the world has its traditional Christmas dinner.
I remember my grandmother who was from East Prussia, it was a strict rule at Christmas having a big fat goose in the oven for hours. It was served with homemade dumplings and red cabbage. Goose or ducks are still popular for dinner at Christmas, but some people here are just eating potato salad and hot dogs.
Also, both Queen Mary's parents grew up in Scotland - so they may have enjoyed some plum pudding as they grew up and incorporated the tradition into their Christmas festivities. So, Queen Mary enjoyed it as a child in Tasmania.
 
Also, both Queen Mary's parents grew up in Scotland - so they may have enjoyed some plum pudding as they grew up and incorporated the tradition into their Christmas festivities. So, Queen Mary enjoyed it as a child in Tasmania.

I agree Izzie.

The supermarkets and department store food halls are full of commercial Christmas Puddings and traditional Christmas Cakes here in Australia, even these days.

You can buy little one person puddings in their own little red plastic bowls if you live alone, or are the only one in your family who wants to eat it.

I thought Mary was lucky to grow-up near a beach to be able to use her beach Christmas presents straight away.

Kickboards, beach towels, swimming googles, beach bags, beach hats, swimsuits, blow-up canoes, beach-balls, floats, water-wings, lie-lows … and these days noodles … very normal Australian Christmas presents for kids here.

Even summer furniture like basket chairs and sun-lounges.

And Tasmania has many small towns not on a coast or near a swimming pool, so many long days before you got to use them.

So Mary was lucky to get to swim on Christmas Day.

Nikolai and his girlfriend are in Hobart.

Maybe they will have Christmas with Mary’s family that Nikolai spoke about in an interview he did when in Australia in 2023.

I don’t think that happened in the end.

Benedikte’s Instagram Account had a quick little reel of photos of them up on Mt. Wellington … which overlooks the city.

Big change to the Sydney weather they’ve been having … rugged up like it’s winter down there.

Sorry, I can’t attach … one of those quick posts that disappear after you see it.
 
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Ah yes good old Plum pudding (or Christmas Pudding) as we tend to call it. The plum comes from an old word for raisins. Everyones favourite moment is when it is doused in brandy and set alit to be carried in to the dining room (I’ll never forget my grandmother burning a new carpet doing this).
I assume Daisy will have picked one up on her recent trip to London. I think I read she often gets them from Fortnum and Masons which is the “royal grocer” with three royal warrants at one time. We always use to get ours from there as well when we lived near London and until a family friend stopped working there and bringing them back for us.
 
QMII does indeed buy a cake or pudding, not sure when she's in London for her annual Christmas shopping.

I believe it was Queen Ingrid who introduced the tradition into the DRF.

Anyway, thanks for the replies and I'm pretty sure plum pudding will remain a Christmas tradition in the DRF.
 
Lovely and funny! Christmas decorations at Amalienborg today:


The Christmas spirit is spreading in the Royal Family's home at Amalienborg 🎄


 
Love the little touches that make the tree their own.

And lovely to see that they still use their Christmas tree skirt
"The Christmas tree blanket is 20 years old. The royal couple received it as a wedding present from former sports college teacher Ellen Majgaard Bjerre from Brønderslev when they got married in May 2004.
Under the blanket it says "Heartfelt congratulations on your wedding day from a very ordinary family from Brønderslev, including the names of the Bjerre family."

The story behind the skirt
 
And lovely to see that they still use their Christmas tree skirt
"The Christmas tree blanket is 20 years old. The royal couple received it as a wedding present from former sports college teacher Ellen Majgaard Bjerre from Brønderslev when they got married in May 2004.
Under the blanket it says "Heartfelt congratulations on your wedding day from a very ordinary family from Brønderslev, including the names of the Bjerre family."

The story behind the skirt
And back in 1987 Frederik met David Bowie in Hamburg! Here is Billed Bladet article. They even dug up a photo of Frederik, Joachim and David Bowie from 1987!!


Photo:
 
Nice decorations. Liked the kangaroo.
Not over the job and not too spartan, but just right.
I love that their tree is just like anyone else's with quirky ornaments that mean something personal to them. I also love that they still use the tree skirt they received as a wedding gift in 2004! A very lovely personal touch as well.
 
I like the fact that the Christmas tree is in front of a full length mirror. It is marvelous to see the same tree twice.

:xmastree2::xmastree2::xmastree2::xmastree2::xmastree2::xmastree2::xmastree2::xmastree2:
 
Fourth Sunday in Advent 🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️

The custom of decorating a Christmas tree in the home can be traced back to the beginning of the 19th century in Denmark. As in other families, the Christmas tree has a long tradition in the royal family, and the first known Christmas tree in the Royal Palace was decorated back in 1866 by His Majesty the King's great-great-great-grandparents, Christian IX and Queen Louise, at Fredensborg Castle.

In this Advent video, the king dives into the Danish Christmas tree tradition together with Christmas inspector in Den Gamle By in Aarhus, Anna Wowk Vestergaard. Together they visit one of the museum's pockets of time: an apartment as it looked in 1974, where a red fir tree is decorated with the many symbols of Christmas.

🎁 Today's post is the last part of the Royal Couple's digital advent calendar. During December's four Advent Sundays, Their Majesties the King and Queen have examined Christmas traditions. The entire Advent series is collected on the website of the Royal Palace.


 
A wonderful video. Taking me back to my childhood.
Den Gamle By = The Old Town is an open air museum in Aarhus. It's claimed to be the first open air museum in the world. Don't know.
Anyway, the museum consists of some 60-80 buildings from all over DK, that were dismantled and carefully rebuild here, so that it looks like an affluent merchant town from around 1850 or so.
A number of years ago they recreated a similar neighborhood from the 1970s, complete with houses, shops and cars which is exceptionally popular! Especially for those of us who can actually remember the ancient times back in the 70s. I have of course seen that restored apartment before and for me it's fat nostalgia seeing all the details, because they nailed it! Even down to the plates and cups they drink of. - I wonder how many details some of you may recognize. King Frederik notice a small B&O TV in the window of the shop and recalls that they had a TV like that in their room.
King Frederik talks about decorating the Christmas tree, which he still takes part in and it's the exact same type of tree they always have at home that we also see in the museum. - And as you may have noticed the Regent Couple's tree we have already seen is decorated in a more simplistic - and original - way, but in ordinary homes the tree was and indeed still is decorated with a lot of stuff!
Interestingly the star is put on top of the three as one of the first things, in most families I dare say the star is the last thing to be added to the tree. That used to be my task BTW because I am the tallest.
The Christmas tree is as you know a German tradition and originally the candles on the tree were in the Holstein colors, but during the First Schleswigan War that became a big no no! So the candles were changed to and remain to this day in the Danish colors, red and white - and the tree was also from then on decorated with flags. (But not in the DRF. They mainly stick to the pre-1849 ways of decorating the tree.)

Making Christmas decorations at the kitchen table is by now a very old tradition and a great quality time with the children. King Frederik admits that it wasn't something he had much patience for as a child - and it shows...
The paper-hearts they are making were actually something HC Andersen came up with. - And can you guess which colors are the most common? Yes, indeed. Red and white. Did I ever tell you that we are slightly obsessed with our flag in this here country? No? We are!
 
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Permit me to go full nostalgia on you. But it's been fun for me to find some pics from that 1974 apartment and see how much I remember from my own home and those of my family. And they so nailed it!
In fact it's a house with apartments furnished by various people. Like a normal working class apartment with a couple of children and that's of course what I can relate to.
There is also a hippie apartment, because Aarhus was and still is a university city and as such also a very young city, as a large segment of the population is 20-30 years old. But the 70's was also a time when the first immigrant workers came to DK, mainly Turks and they too shared apartments.

But I'll mainly focus on the working class apartment.
First from the outside. A perfectly ordinary inner-city street anno 1974, complete with the modest cars of the period. Few families actually had a car at the time and if they did they were invariable small. Yet, it was possible to cram an entire family inside each of these cars. There were of course no seatbelts, so children were placed there was room. And being a time where supermarkets were still a relatively new phenomenon and where the very first shopping centers were being build, there were lots of small shops everywhere.

The inner yard of an apartment square or (karre) not to be confused with a city block, with the very popular VW Beetle, less reverently referred to a "pregnant rollerskate." The bicycles were simple and sturdy and a pain to tread uphill! Grafitti was chalked not painted - yet.
The windows were one pane glass only and very draughty! During winters we used to tape plastic up in front of the windows. Very little isolation in the walls either, but heating was cheap, so the radiators were red-hot!

Six of the residents in the house. We have the elderly retired women living in the ground floor apartment, complete with a very typical patterned dress of the time. And of course she wouldn't dream of venturing outside without a scarf tied around her hair. Middle class women and up wore hats, but working class wore scarves, and so did my mother, until she died actually.
We have the couple in their 30s with their daughter. The man of course sporting a beard and wearing a denim set, as everybody did back then. It was practically a uniform for school children. So did King Frederik and Joachim too BTW.
The mother is wearing a weirdly patterned dress and 1974 was just before the spoilsports in the fashion industry decided that short dresses were out and maxi was in. It didn't exactly help that plucked eyebrows became fashionable as well... White framed sunglasses were the thing as well. The daughter is dressed in a typical teenage summer dress with lapels the size of dinner tables! Also for men.
Then we have the hippie couple, probably students from the university. The man of course sporting a beard and hair that would be the envy of every Neanderthal. The knitted sweater - an Icelander - was a must for all under 40. Lilac was for whatever incongruous reason an extremely popular color. So were the borders with odd patterns. The headband was a must for women and girls who sported this hairstyle called a "buttocks hairstyle."
All six of them could and would be stuffed inside the car on occasion.
Notice the phone number. Only six digits back then.

But let's go inside. Most apartments were small 55-65 square meters with two or three rooms plus kitchen and usually, but not always, a very small toilet. Showering was done in the basement. Otherwise you washed in the kitchen.
This is the hippie apartment. They have a small child. They have furnished their apartment with whatever they could salvage here and there, money was tight being students. But the children's chair was everywhere! Very solid, very practical and it worked. It was also next to impossible to wear out. They are still in use in some families.
A cheap paper-lamp provided plenty of light and some horror they must have gotten as a present by aunt Oda in the window. The Christmas calendar candle in the window. Along with the omnipresent kitchen-roll holder, that today is sought after and fat nostalgia.
The chairs are practical, simple, cheap and durable. The radiator can still be seen in many older houses. A nightmare to keep clean and paint and even worse to carry away!
A handy baby-carrier up against the wall. And last the new grey plastic sockets on the wall.

From there let's go into the apartment of the retirees.
There style of furniture is more 50's style, unsurprisingly.
Let's go for the top photo first.
A Christmas beer on the table, white cap. A typical deck of cards from the period. Christmas hearts on the plates, they are still popular but way too sweet for my taste. The cups are typical post WWII pattern. Confetti-sweets in the glass-bowl. The gilded and IMO pretty depressing picture frames were very common, depicting something dark. The home made advent wreath on the table, here for once with red candles. The chairs were typical for the post WWII era. Looking simple they were honestly not particularly comfortable, but incredibly sturdy!
In the background is a buro, in DK often called a skuffedarium = a drawerdarium. With a home made winter-scene. With very treasured (and today most sought after) Bing and Grøndahl figurines. Notice the black bakelite sockets on the walls. They were now being replaced by the modern grey ones. But you can still find them in many older apartments.
In the background is the kitchen with a small gas-stove and oven. The handles on the kitchen drawers are worth a minor fortune now if you can find them. The drain from the kitchen sinks in the apartments above were always on the inside.
The second photo:
Features an advent wreath, probably bought this time, people got more money to spend during the 70s. And so is the table cloth it is placed on. Notice the home-made winter scenes in the background. A giant radio in the background, probably from the 50s. with a 50s style telephone besides it. The cords on these phones were not twisted, that came with the phones in the 70s. It was only during the 70s that telephones became common in most homes, and prior to that they were pretty unusual.

Second part in the next post.

Second part.
It's time to move into a a couple of working class apartments.
Let's take the more affluent first, probably a skilled worker. Possible the wife was working as well, that also became normal at that time.
Bright but not too weird curtains. Some copper-whatever on the walls and the piping for the radiators in upstair-apartments inside.
The Christmas tree is decorated in a style that is still very typical. Here with electric candles, we are after all in the 1970s. Notice the songbird perched on the tree, made from paper.
The less said about the re-upholstered sofa the better... Probably bought in the 60s. And so is the matching sofa-table, complete with a very practical shelve for magazines and papers. The sofa is flanked by two lamps in 50s style, perhaps an heirloom. There is a more modern lamp standing next to the window. Under the table is the ever-present rya-carpet. That had to vacuumed or beaten very regularly. The lamp above the table is also common for the era, and emitted a surprising amount of light.
The by painters very hated hessian-wallpaper.
And dad has got a chair for himself. For the time it would still be unusual for the wife to sit in the best chair.

Let's now go to the more modest working class home.
We will start with the common lamp over the table, it was and still is pretty horrible! Emitting a very poor light.
The TV is fairly modern, but placed inside a very practical cabinet with wheels and of course a shelve for the magazines that at this time began to print what was on the TV that week. As there was only one TV-channel at the time, everybody watched the same thing. Some could watch Swedish, German or even Norwegian TV as well - the atmospheric conditions permitting...
The flower-box on legs were also very common. I used the one we had to play with my Airfix soldiers. A weird mismatch of colors on the sofa and chair but they worked.
The painting of the fisherman on the wall with a sou-west and a pipe was so common that I dare claim it hung in at least 80 % of all working class homes at the time. I even had one in my first home, when moving out. I needed something, anything, for my walls.
And now with a more modern lamp in the corner.
The sofa was not particularly comfortable but it was affordable. The pillow to the right was very common, often home-embroidered.
Nowadays it's mandatory to have an electrical socket for every tree meters IIRC, but in the 70s it was common with three sockets in a living room. One for general use at the door. One for a lamp and one for the radio.
Now in Christmas mode. A pretty modest Christmas tree, we had the exact same star on our tree. The rug for the tree was decorated with home made embroidery. Even working class families now brought fairly modest advent wreaths. To the far left is a Christmas calendar for the children, with 24 lids to be opened as a countdown to Christmas. And the show on the TV is a children Christmas-TV-calendar, with 24 short episodes, also as a countdown.
Notice the copper-watercan on the floor.

Let's end this odyssey by go shopping:
Color TV sets were getting common and affordable. Some of them 22 inch screes or even 24 inch screens! Stereo sets were also becoming common, at least among the younger generations. And were there any teenagers who didn't dream about a record player? Even small portable TVs for your caravan or more likely your allotment garden were available. And so of course were film projectors, used to bore guests out of your house with homemade films of your visit to Harzen in Germany.
 
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I love that! I can mostly identify with the "hippie" apartment, that was part of my youth both in Germany and later the US. Such precious memories, thanks for sharing this.
 
In another thread Sun Lion said this:
"The translation of the article quotes the Queen as saying cognac is poured over the plum pudding … also called a plum duff in Tasmania … and set alight, and how Mary likes to have it at Christmas."

Now, since Queen Mary is fond of this, we may assume it's an Australian/British tradition she may still be enjoying
So can someone tell those of us who have no idea about plum puddings, about the traditions surrounding such a thing at Christmas?
It is an English traditional dessert, I believe. Here in the US, the plum puddings sold all seem to be made in the UK. I just enjoyed a mini plum pudding that I was able to reheat in the microwave. I remember as a child the cooked plum pudding needed to be reheated by steaming on the stove stop. At a festive dinner, the pudding is served flaming - by pouring brady around the hot pudding on a platter. And it is traditionally served with Hard Sauce - butter mixed with confectionary sugar and flavored with brandy.
 
It is an English traditional dessert, I believe. Here in the US, the plum puddings sold all seem to be made in the UK. I just enjoyed a mini plum pudding that I was able to reheat in the microwave. I remember as a child the cooked plum pudding needed to be reheated by steaming on the stove stop. At a festive dinner, the pudding is served flaming - by pouring brady around the hot pudding on a platter. And it is traditionally served with Hard Sauce - butter mixed with confectionary sugar and flavored with brandy.
Thanks for your input. And congratulations on your first posts.

But brandy... Would schnapps work by any chance?

Silly me, forgive me, schnapps always work.
 
Plum pudding is so very British and I assume that all British influenced countries or former colonies of the British have kept certain customs food included. Each country does have their own traditions.

I still don't know how to make plum pudding, is it really made out of plums? i guess each country in the world has its traditional Christmas dinner.
I remember my grandmother who was from East Prussia, it was a strict rule at Christmas having a big fat goose in the oven for hours. It was served with homemade dumplings and red cabbage. Goose or ducks are still popular for dinner at Christmas, but some people here are just eating potato salad and hot dogs.
There are many recipes for plum pudding but none include plums! Dried fruits, beer and flour are the main ingredients….
 
It looks like the Regent Couple were met by QMII. She's probably been there for a couple of days opening up the place and doing some decorating. I also guess the Regent Couple and children still sleep in a nearby building. No need to kick QMII out of a place she is fond of, that would be poor taste IMO.
 
It looks like the Regent Couple were met by QMII. She's probably been there for a couple of days opening up the place and doing some decorating. I also guess the Regent Couple and children still sleep in a nearby building. No need to kick QMII out of a place she is fond of, that would be poor taste IMO.
I think I'd read somewhere that QMII was taking up residence there on 12/20 through 12/30.
 
IIRC Marselisborg is the one palace which is actually owned by Queen Margrethe. So they can't kick her out.
And they didn't kick her out of state-owned Fredensborg either, but continued to live in the Chancellery House.
 
Lovely photos. Love the second one of Margrethe greeting Christian, I'm sure they have a lot to share.
Wonderful photo of the family.
More then regent couple vs former queen, it's a family spending sometime together.
Frederik has fond memories of this place so no need to rush changes
 
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