I tend to write STEM based posts on steemit but right now I think I am going to write something a little different. Now many on steemit do not know much about me, as my introduction post wasn't written very well so in a way this will act as a more in depth introduceyourself. First of all, hello everyone! My name is Brodie and I live in Western Canada. I am 19 years old and I was born on the 23rd day of March. Now before we get into the Christmas traditions of my family I am going to talk about my 2 nicknames that I have had that people know me by (although on here people tend to call me Kryzsec) and those nicknames are Brenda and Sven. Now for many people they will question both of those nicknames but I want to explain them as they ultimately hold a part of my personality.

Brenda

Now most people question this one because "it's a girls name" but the reason it is a nickname is probably the least expected story of all. During high school (secondary) I volunteered at a summer camp over the summers as a camp counselor. Out at the camp we had groups made up of 10 campers and then a couple male and female counselors/CIT's (counselor in training). Now during one of my first weeks of being a volunteer my group (the campers) decided that all of the girls would get nicknames of boys and the boys get female nicknames. So where does Brenda come from? That answer is simple, I took my first name and last name and mixed them together since both names had 6 letters and were extremely similar. While I am not sharing my last name on here with you peeps (trying to keep as much privacy as I can) what the outcome was was Brenda. Every year that I went back to the camp there was at least 1 camper that recognized me as Brenda and overtime everyone learned it and started to call me Brenda. Over a couple of years it went from being a camp nickname to one that people called me year round and honestly it always brings back the good memories of being out at camp so I truly enjoyed it. While some have questioned the potential for that being a "low-key" transgender sign, the truth is that I am happily the gender I was born as, not that I am against transgender people. So now everyone here knows the story of how, and why, I have a nickname of Brenda.

Sven

Now many of you may have questioned the nickname of Sven if I am from Canada. Now to answer your questions, Norwegian. For those that are confused, Sven is a Scandinavian name and the country of origin of my family is Norway. As for why my grandparents call me Sven, the story is that when I was born my hair was red (my hair color is dirty blonde but it is going darker brown each year) but I think more importantly is Sven is Old Norse for Young Warrior or Young boy but truthfully I do not know why my grandparents called me Sven . Part of it may have been just to attempt to continue our original culture or it may have just been because I reminded them of someone named Sven (my knowledge of Norwegian culture is pretty limited). The reason why I keep it is because it reminds me of my grandparents (still alive) and all the good times I had in my childhood with them. Anyways, the reason for me bringing up these nicknames in a post about Christmas tradition is literally to introduce my family as being or Norwegian descent. Now when we moved to Canada we had changed our last name as it was Olsen, if you don't know, thats a pretty common last name in Norway. What is even more interesting is that many of my teachers when growing up had names like "Hagen" or "Johnsen" and even "Eriksen" and all of them (friends of my grandfather as he is a retired teacher) had their family move from Norway. Thats right, the area I live in has a lot of Norwegians! Anyways time to move on.

Our Christmas Tradition

So for those that do not know, Norwegian (or more generally Scandinavian) Christmas traditions have not only lots of food, but lots of really gross foods. My apologies for anyone that has these traditions and enjoys the taste of it but Lutefisk is, I will never understand how anyone enjoys it. For those that do not know, lutefisk is dried white fish (such as Cod) that takes about 2 weeks of preparation of soaking the fish in cold water and Lye before cooking, oh and be careful what you cook and eat it with as it destroys silver and if you do not clean it off of dishes soon enough then you throw out the dishes and get new ones. All the food isn't that bad though, for instance there is lefse which is absolutely delicious, its kind of like a tortilla in shape but it... it tastes delicious.

Another part of our tradition is cheese, and lots of it. Now most people are probably all wide eyed as right now cheese is still in trend but what you do not realize is that the cheeses we have aren't things lark marble, or cheddar, no we have special cheese for the occasion such as Brunost, Jarlsberg, and you cannot forget Gamalost (literally old cheese that has been left to sit until it gets really really... well... gross) but its tradition so we stick with it.

It Isn't Just Gross Food

We also have the regular turkey dinner with stuffing and sweet potatoes, etc that everyone else has but the traditions that we have extend beyond our Norwegian heritage. Recently (in the past 7 years) we included my step-moms families traditions into our Christmas traditions and, well, my step-moms family is Polish-French-Canadian meaning their Christmas Eve dinner is 7 courses of mushroom soup, fish, mushroom uszka (pronounced like ooh-shh-key), and basically different combinations of the two. Now if you cannot tell from my response to lutefisk, fish really isn't my favourite but neither are mushrooms so before I tell you about this dinner, lets just say I usually have a separate thing just for me or else go to a dinner with my brother-in-law and step-dad and mother. Another tradition to do with Christmas that we do is getting one of those chocolate oranges (that nobody likes or eats) constantly passing it off to others until someone finally takes it and eats it. But beside food we usually have (as my father has a license to buy and shoot off fireworks, just usually not the permit) fireworks that we shoot off, and not the family kind. This kind of came about as my dad would help to shoot off the annual firework show for one of the nearby towns and when they ordered the fireworks, everyone that shot them off (as they had to have a license) would usually add a few items to the list of things to order so that they could celebrate themselves and they would pitch in to buy their own share. Another much smaller tradition was everyone talking about the story of the 3 legged dog without ever actually telling the story as, from context of them talking abut the story, it is not child friendly. All of this taken in, the biggest tradition with christmas that we had though was with my mothers family and this tradition is quite simple: every year when all of my moms sisters get together, someone says something (as simple as "thats a nice dress") and a fight starts and then the family splits into 2 sides of the fight and for the next year, you do not talk to people that were on the other side of the fight.

So now you know my families Christmas tradition! Let me get to know you by telling me your family traditions either as a reply or write your own post and link it in the comments! Happy Holidays Everyone!

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