Hey there, I hope you are doing well. So, it is already Christmas time, the year is almost done and I can’t believe it, it just flew away! These days, I was remembering that this year will be my first Christmas away from home and in the cold, I hope I survive. So today, I want to tell you how I spend Christmas in Brazil with my family and how Brazilians, in general, are used to spending it together.

Well, at first, the weeks before Christmas we don’t have any traditions, like advent calendar or stuff like that, but we do have a period to decorate the house, set up the tree and everything that goes with it, which is on the first Sunday of Advent, according to the Christian tradition. Normally I am the one doing it with my mom, but this year she has to do it herself, I guess she is stressed about it. Some people don’t care about the decoration, but I do! I love this Christmas feeling and I love putting ornaments all around the house.

Then, we start celebrating Jesus birthday during the night of December 24th with our whole family Normally we get together around 22:00 and we talk, aunts will ask if you're finally dating someone (kidding not kidding), we meet the relatives we don’t see for a while, we play some games, exchange the gifts and have some fun. Later, at midnight, we do our prayers and have dinner with good meals and abundance of food. Normally the plan after it is just to keep having fun with the family until we get tired My family, as a traditionally huge and talkative (yes, and super loud) Brazilian family, we go the whole night long, or until 3 am at least, the neighbours come by and at the end we are all together, singing, drinking, talking, playing games…

Ah, I almost forgot to mention Santa’s tradition. When the kids go to sleep, Santa (not their parents, please), comes and leaves the present they asked for if they have been well behaved during the year.

The next day, I mean when we wake up, we have lunch together to eat the leftovers or go out for lunch. Usually, we do it with the other side of the family, for example, if we have spent the night with Mom’s side, then the next day we go with dad’s side of the family. But in my case, we celebrate all together. The rest of the day we just chill and rest. And as we are catholic, we go to the church either during the 25th or before going to dinner on the 24th.

So, I am going to stop here because I am already missing Christmas time with my lovely and crazy family (and we are still a month away). Thank you for reading about my Brazilian way of celebrating Christmas and I hope you have enjoyed it. See you!

Maria Carolina is an International Management student from Brazil and currently studying for one year at DIT as a double degree student. She is part of ESN Deggendorf and Ceará Global project. She is passionate about life and how it goes for people all around the world. She is a nature lover especially when it comes to sunsets.