Christmas in Finland

I absolutely love Christmas at home in Finland. I love the snow, the cold weather (I can take a few weeks of it!), the peace and quiet and I love staying at my parents house. This time both my boyfriend and I packed our bags and wen't to Finland for two and a half weeks, our suitcases full of presents and our fingers crossed for lots of snow. We also took our little pomeranian Nano, he loves the snow and is such a good traveller.

 We arrived to a +3'C Helsinki with no snow what so ever! We did our final Christmas shopping in slightly grey but cold weather and then on the third night the snow finally arrived. It kept snowing for the next couple of days so our Christmas was well and truly white.

Coat: Soaked in Luxury

Fur headband: JZB

Scarf: Cashmere from Nepal

In Finland we celebrate on the 24th of December and our celebrations are slightly different to the British ones. Our Christmas morning starts with a rice pudding like 'rice porridge' with cinnamon and sugar. We then make our way to a little Chapel down the road for Christmas Church, it's a nice tradition and reminds us what it's really about. Time for afternoon coffee and cakes in the cosy lounge downstairs. With the fire on watching the snow outside I could not have felt more christmassy. After this my boyfriend and I braved the snow storm like weather with the two dogs in an attempt to walk off the cakes before yet another tradition, the Christmas Sauna.

We have ham for Christmas dinner, with lots of fish including hot and cold smoked salmon, herring, caviar, carelian pasties 'karjalanpiirakka' made by gran and a variety of vegetable casseroles such as carrot and sweet potato. For pudding we had caramel biscuit baskets with white chocolate ice cream, not quite as traditional but delicious nonetheless.

When you are young, Santa actually comes to your house to deliver the presents (my dad did the rounds to the neighbourhood children before dinner!). As we are a little older now we share the gifts from under the tree and then spend hours opening them one by one so everyone can see what you got. I think its a nice way of savouring the fun of giving and receiving. All this is of course enjoyed with the fire blazing and a glass of 20 year old port in hand.

After playing with our new gifts, a bit of a dance, a midnight snack and lots of selfies with my sisters new selfie stick, the whole house went to bed happy. Okay maybe the kids stayed up playing a little bit longer than the parents did.