Christmas 1999

Then something about this Xmas. But I've done quite big pages of two previous ones. There must be the very basic things about Xmas here.

Xmas 1998

Xmas 2000

I did my shopping in the middle of November. That looks so wise: I hate big crowds of people. Much like rodents or something equally discussing things.

I was doing my shopping on Friday, November the 19th, 1999. Weather is quite typical for that time: gloomy and very depressing.

Luckily, there is at least some snow on the ground. But that doesn't make that crowd happy. No way. The tram is coming just now?! No happiness. Not at all. That's very typically Finnish: we are extremely pessimistic!

It's really classical place to meet someone at "under the clock". It's this place. But now they had added a clock which shows time till end of millennium (okay, that ends at December 31st, 2001 at midnight (that idiot-monk did that awful error)).

Hello! Christmas-trees at middle of November! Okay, no Christmas-muzak.

This is the most idiotic thing of that department-store. One can come down (quite great speed) with it. But up? No way! And this is the only place.

Retry was on November the 25th, 1999. Highest temperature was 0.4C (=F) and lowest -0.5C (=F). Not very big margin between those. But the time to measure wasn't very big: a few hours.

Elevators there. Those are really essential things to me.

I played with Legos when I was child. Very big changes in then. And those changes aren't into good direction.

Dolls, every kind of such!

Then one of my friends had his legendary birthday party in my place. The actual day would be December 6th. But that's our independence day. Not very good to have party then. Maybe previous day. Or (like now) the day before that.

Nearly all relatives from this region were here.

Then I managed to do my Christmas card.

We (my father and I) had our Christmas sauna in Wednesday. Quite early (better days would be Thursday and even Friday). Ökö was with us all the time. Quite remarkable: one has heavy fur. Then one must feel very hot and uncomfortable.

Christmas eve

Christmas eve is the day. And Santa visits personally every home.

Christmas tree in Uusmäki. I don't like the "American style" Christmas tree. One can't even see the tree behind all glitter, decorations, lights, etc. Yuck!

Okay, candles should be electric, though. Because "real" candles are great fire hazard!

Okay. Then we start eating beginning of our meal. Tuuli wasn't very co-operative. Okay, one can understand that easily: she has been tortured with Santa for a month. And now he would come. Or maybe not!

That orange thing on the toast is roe from rainbow trout. On the roe is chopped raw onions and sour cream (quite special kind of that, very thick).

That sandwich is really extremely delicious. I had once a possibility to compare that with real caviar. And this was better, much better.

Here are the most starting foods:

• 'Rosolli' That's the red salad at the bottom. A salad made of beet roots, potatoes (not now), boiled carrots, apples, sometimes herring (but not now), onion, pickled cucumber and dressing to it (whipped cream, vinegar and soured cream colored with beet roots)
• Reindeer pate. That's located at the middle of plate, down and left from the potato. Top of the pate are mountain crawberries. And yes really so, we eat Rudolf! In the north of our country, we have really many of them.
• Different herrings and Baltic herrings. Those are located at the right side of plate. Pickled one. Some are in mustard sauce.
• Raw fish. Placed at the top of plate. Both salmon and whitefish. One takes the fillet of a salmon. And then puts salt to it. Let it lie for a day or so. Then it's ready!

Main course. We eat turkey. Usually here is a ham, extremely huge one. Coming from some sumo-wrestler-pig.

My father missed Santa this time, too!

Nearly compulsory picture of me!

This picture is just great!

She got this puppy of husky-dog. She thought, it's a wolf. Yes, partly true! Huskies are extremely near to wolves!

Then dessert!! Though, we weren't ready for it. No way!

In the bottom, there's apricot ice cream. Non-sugaric, of course. And "normal" whipped cream at the top. Cloudberries in the middle of them. Very delicious berry. But not suitable for foreigners!

Batteries of my camera were dying now! I used quite heavy image processing, but results were not very good. Thus, that cake at the bottom of plate is totally black. It's rather dark, yes (all kind of spices there). But not so much.

Christmas day

Usually we don't do anything special in that day. Not even visits. But then visit to the house of my sister isn't actually real visit...

People are looking at the WWW of this Christmas. Finnish version of it.

My sister and her daughter are making a "house of cookies". Momins are "on" now among kids. So there are two figures of them.

Pauli had really excellent track of model-cars.

Our cousin Heikki Hyötyniemi and his kids were there, too.

Here Pauli is assembling one set from Lego. "Rock Raider".

Mika is highly educated engineer. Those modern Legos are suitable for him.

Weather

This id from Christmas eve to boxing day. Highest temperature was 4.1C (=39.3F) and lowest -3.3C (=36.0F). It seems, that boxing day was coldest of the days.

We had some snow. Though not very much, maybe an inch or so.

New Year is very essential part!

'Joulutorttu' (maybe the suitable translation is plum tart) looks like this. In the middle there is plum jam. That's made of dried plums, water, and some sugar. My mother (I don't really know, if that's done normally) adds a touch of cinnamon - that gives extra-good taste. And the whole thing is done out of puff pastry. And I just love that!

That isn't very sweet thing. But the delicious puff pastry!
This picture looks just awful. Yes, quite true! I don't have Christmas decorations. Ökö likes them much too much...

Actually the main reason for this picture is clear: it's one of my first taken with my new digital camera, Olympus C-920 Zoom. That camera is real beast, it can do everything (and much more).

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