New Exhibition takes visitors back to the roots of Danish Christmas

The exhibition The Roots of Christmas is a total experience taking you into different Christmas universes. In the first you find yourself in a gigantic Advent calendar where the windows of the National Museum have been transformed into 24 calendar doors. Behind the doors are old Christmas decorations that reveal surprising stories about Christmas past.

In the next universe you arrive at a dark Danish farmyard on the night of Christmas. You are actually not meant to be out here, because the dark forces of nature are even more powerful at Christmas. Next stop is a forest a thousand years ago, where Vikings have just killed a pig as an offering to the gods. As you go through the exhibition you discover that Christmas is an age-old ritual full of surprises.

The traditional Danish tale Peter’s Christmas has been a source of Christmas nostalgia since the 1800s, but Christmas has much deeper roots in Christianity and the pagan winter celebration Jól. Christmas was once a seasonal ritual connecting people, nature and the gods. It marked the transition to a new year and brought prosperity and fertility.

Eat for Your Life

“There was to be no shortage of food and beer at Christmas. It was actually bad luck not to eat as much as you could, so the table was always full of food at Christmastime. The more you ate, the more you would have in the new year. So when you sit at Christmas dinner today you are actually participating in an old ritual of eating for your life,” says exhibition curator Johanne Steenstrup. 

Christmas Galore at the National Museum of Denmark

• Christmas in the Victorian Home where you can see how Denmark’s upper middle class celebrated Christmas at the end of the 1800s.

• Christmas Through the Ages Tour of the National Museum with a guide who takes you through the history of Christmas from the Vikings to today.
• Christmas Eve at the Museum, 5 & 12 December from 18.00-21.00
  See our new exhibition The Roots of Christmas, buy Christmas gifts in the peace and quiet of the museum shop, and visit the finest Christmas apartment of the 1800s with a guided tour of the museum’s Victorian Home. Not to mention enjoying Denmark’s traditional Christmas rice pudding, ‘æbleskiver’ batter balls and Christmas drinks.

• A special range of historical Christmas decorations in the museum shop.
• A Christmas menu at Restaurant Smör.
• Christmas weekend workshops where you can make your own Christmas decorations – pinecone elves, elf staircases and ballerinas. You can also crochet small pigs.