It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in our little cottage. The candles are lit, the decorations are hung, Christmas music is playing and my little lady’s risengrød is almost ready for the Nisse.

Risengrød is Danish for “rice pudding”. Eating rice pudding as part of your Christmas meal and making a bowl as a gift for your Nisse is a Danish tradition. My friend R.’s sister lives in Denmark and around this time of year we would always talk about leaving out our little bowls of risengrød for the Nisse.  I think R. might have been a pixie himself, there was always a twinkle in his eyes.

You want to keep your Nisse happy you see, especially at this time of year, or they’ll play all kinds of little jokes on you. Nisse love to tease! Our Nisse is usually very well behaved, but I know he’s been up to some kind of magic in the cottage lately. I heard laughing the other morning and came down to find that he had been feasting on a bowl of Christmas candy I had set out. A pile of foil wrappers littered the floor and a little trail of chocolate crumbs was leading away from it.

I’ve been very lucky this year because my little lady is making us a big patch of risengrød to put up in the attic for him. I prefer keeping him happy as I don’t want him to get up to too much mischief!