Danes are being very social when Christmas season arrives. Maybe they are social in general, but within closed circles probably. When it comes to Christmas, they seem to want to find as many occasions as possible to meet and socialize with people. Julefrokost (It’s literally translated to “Christmas Lunch” but mostly happen in the evening.) is a lovely Danish Christmas tradition.

Wikipedia defines Julefrokost as below.

“A traditional julefrokost is a family event on Christmas Day or shortly after. However, during the whole of December all groups of people (coworkers, members of clubs and organizations) generally hold their own annualjulefrokost on a Friday or Saturday. The “lunch” often include music and dancing, and usually continues into the very early hours of the morning with plentiful drinking. All over Denmark trains and buses run all night during the julefrokostseason and the police are on a special lookout for drunk drivers.” 

Companies also organize their own Julefrokost. Danes drink quite a lot, or at least they used to. Sometimes Julefrokost led some people to have unwise affairs which hiked the divorce rate right after the Christmas. I don’t know if it’s true or just a joke but people didn’t say that it’s not true when I asked them about it.

I didn’t have my proper Danish Julefrokost last year, though had one in a Korean way. Anyway this year, I had one with my Danish Ballet classmates who are mostly Danes. After the last ballet class of 2014, we went downstairs and had a cozy little Julefrokost at Café Elefanten.

People spoke Danish in general unless I really had to speak English due to lack of vocabulary or I had to ask meanings of some words, but I could understand a lot this time and didn’t feel lost in the middle of Danes, thanks to my Danish education. As I have my Danish kæreste(boyfriend/girlfriend in Danish, here it means boyfriend.), I will experience genuine Danish Christmas tradition this year.