Tradition #9 - New Year's

We are on our last few days of 2017 and on our last tradition. Today we are taking a look at New Year’s traditions from around the world. Some of them you’ll be familiar with and maybe even do, and some will be new to you and you might want to give them a try.

A popular tradition is watching the ball drop at Times Square at midnight. Whether you're there or just watching on TV, it’s something that you always associate with New Year’s Eve.

Originating in Scotland, Auld Lang Syne is usually heard or sung as the old year goes out and the New Year comes in.

Kissing at midnight is another fun tradition which started in Europe to “ensure” that you won’t spend the year ahead lonely.

In Mexico and Brazil, it is said that colourful underwear will help you have the type of year you want. For example yellow means prosperity and success and red means lots of love ahead for you.

Many Spanish speaking countries will eat 12 grapes at midnight so that they have 12 months of good luck.

Circles in the Philippines mean good luck so you will see many people from the Philippines wearing something polka dotted on New Year’s.  

In Denmark, people save unused dishes and throw them against doors of family and friends on New Year’s Eve. They also jump from chairs at midnight as a way to “jump” into the New Year.

Japanese Buddhists will ring bells 108 times at the temples for good luck and cleanliness in the New Year.

Swiss people will drop ice cream on their floors to celebrate the New Year. Ah! What a waste of ice cream.

In Romania, they toss coins into rivers to ensure that they have a happy New Year.

Belgium farmers take their livestock seriously, they wish all of the cows a Happy New Year when the clock strikes 12. In Romania, the farmers even talk to their cows for long periods of time as the New Year begins.

This one’s interesting; some people in Siberia will go into freezing cold lakes carrying tree trunks. Don’t know why exactly, but it’s like Polar Swims I guess but with tree trunks.

In France, the New Year is ushered in with a big stack of crepes.

 

Happy New Year!

Christmas Tradition #8 - Gingerbread Cookies

It’s the last post before Christmas. Hard to believe it’s Christmas already this Monday. I am doing my usual holiday baking, making lots of cookies and cakes.

One tradition that we haven’t talked about yet is gingerbread. Whenever you think about gingerbread, you think about Christmastime. I used to make and decorate houses when I was little and always get a decorated gingerbread man with Smartie buttons and icing. I have to admit that I would usually bite off the icing bits and Smartie buttons and leave the rest for my mom, but they are a yummy treat for this time of year.

Last Christmas I made my very first batch of gingerbread men on my own. I found a really easy recipe that you can make ahead of time and freeze the dough for whenever you are ready to make some.

Take a look at the recipe below. You can bake them right away or like I said, you can make the dough and then bake them when you are ready which is what I did this time around.

Gingerbread Cookies

 3 cups of flour

¾ cup brown sugar

¾ tsp. baking soda

1 tbsp. cinnamon

1 tbsp. ground ginger

½ tsp. salt

12 tbsp. butter, softened

¾ cup molasses

2 tbsp. milk

Mix the dry ingredients together in the mixer bowl and then put it on “stir” to mix them all up.

  

Add the butter until it’s like sand.

With the mixer going, add the molasses and the milk. When the dough comes together, then it’s ready.

Pat into two separate balls and wrap in plastic wrap. You can let them sit in the fridge for about an hour or so and then roll them out and cut shapes or you can label then and place them in the freezer until you are ready to use them. If you plan to use them in the next day or so then you can leave them wrapped tightly in the fridge. 

If you are making them right away and have all your shapes cut out, then you can place them on a cookie sheet with parchment paper and bake for 8-11 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Let the cookies cool on wire racks.

You can decorate your cookies once they have cooled with candies and chocolate treats. Take a look at this post that we did for sugar cookies for Valentine’s Day and try using this same icing on your gingerbread cookies. http://paperwhitecreations.blogspot.ca/2014/02/valentine-baking.html

 

Enjoy your cookies and Merry Christmas!

Christmas Traditions #7- Ornaments

I know we have talked about Christmas décor and ornaments already but today we’re gonna go a little further and explore the tradition of the Christmas ornament a bit more and make some too!

Christmas trees were traditionally decorated with things like fruit (usually apples), candy canes, and different shaped pastries.

Glass ornaments were first introduced in Germany by Hans Greiner in the late 1500’s. He made garlands of tin and glass beads. Since these ornaments were so popular, eventually people began to experiment and made what we see as the “traditional” Christmas tree ornament, glass balls decorated that have a cap and hook near the top. Mass productions of ornaments began in in New York in 1890 after Woolworth sold the German imported versions in 1880. Of course now you can find ornaments in all shapes and sizes some are mass produced but you can find some many handcrafted with lots of details.

You can also make your own ornaments which is what we are going to do today. We found some cool paper ornaments on Curbly .com so we are going to try these out with our own modifications.

These are super cute and very easy to make. Again we are making use of our leftover card strips.

We used three sizes of strips 5”, 5 ¾”, 6 ¾”. If you take a look at the link below you will see that they use different lengths for different size ornaments. They cut theirs down to certain sizes but we just used our leftover strips that all are ¾ inches wide and most of them are all about 6 ¾ inches long and then we just cut them accordingly.

We used one of the 5” strips, two of the 5 ¾” strips, and two of the 6 ¾” strips.

Once you have your strips ready to go then layer or sandwich them together starting with the longest one, then medium one, then the smallest one in the middle, and then the other medium one, and finally the other longest one. You can pick any colours you want as well.

You can hold all of the strips together with a foldback clip and then staple all the strips together, glue all the bits together near the ends, or you can punch a hole and use an eyelet which is a handy hole to hang it from later on. 

If you tape it together, you will need to make a hole at the top of the ornament so that you can put a ribbon through it to hang it up.

If you staple it, you can cut some small complimentary coloured bits to cover the staples.

Feel inspired and want to make more ornaments? Then follow the links to some other cool DIY ornaments that we found. 

https://www.curbly.com/9452-how-to-make-modern-paper-ornaments

https://www.diyncrafts.com/9606/decor/20-hopelessly-adorable-diy-christmas-ornaments-made-paper