It was Christmas Eve and Noa helped me to prepare Finnish Christmas dinner, which involved swede and carrot dishes baked in the oven. Noa was a great help in adding the ingredients in and mixing them up. We made an enjoyable meal and had some glogi (like mulled wine) and home-made joulupipareita (like gingerbread) and joulutorttuja (plum tarts) afterwards... and of course some nice chocolate.

This Christmas seemed to be an important one in establishing our family’s Christmas tradition, finding a way of integrating Finnish and British customs. Food with different flavours and smells is what I remember very well from my own childhood and is what I want to pass on to Noa. Noa’s absolute favourite baking turned out to be joulupiparit (similar to gingerbread, but slightly less gingery). Noa and I found it hard not to eat the dough before it was baked.

Noa wanted to make cards to his best friends at his nursery. I was impressed with him patiently drawing, colouring, cutting, sticking and writing with very little help from me. He put them into envelops, wrote the names on top and took them to the nursery the following day. I thought it was very sweet of him.

Noa and I made small Finnish flags that were attached to a piece of string. We put them into our small Christmas tree. The flags are very traditional part of Christmas decorations in Finland and they are quite fun and easy to make. Noa helped with cutting and sticking, whereas I did the folding. After we had made few, Noa was asking: ‘Is it ready yet?’ We made 15 flags in total.

During the last few months Noa has become very interested in alphabets and has been practising writing and saying letters in English and in Finnish nearly every day. That’s why we thought it would be a good time to write an important letter to ‘Joulupukki’ (Father Christmas). When I first mentioned the idea to Noa, I asked him to think about what he would like Joulupukki to bring him. Few days later he told me that he had been thinking about his wish list and was ready to write to Joulupukki. We started off in Finnish, continued in English and finished in Finnish again. The letter says: ‘Joulupukille (to Father Christmas), spriderman, lightning McQueen hat, joulukyna (Christmas pen???) t: Noa’. He then also decorated the envelope with snowflakes.

Whilst waiting for the snow to arrive to Wales this winter, I taught Noa how to make snowflakes out of paper. First we folded a square paper into half and folded it half again. By holding on to the corner that was the central point, we brought the side corners together so that the paper became a triangle instead of a square. This was a bit tricky... Then we cut out bits from all sides. Noa loves cutting paper and is getting quite good at handling scissors. He was very focused. Once we had few snowflakes ready we taped them onto our dining room window. Noa shouted happily: ‘Look mummy, it’s snowing!!’ He is looking forward to the real snow, but at least these compensate a little.

We decided to make some ‘joulutonttuja’ (Father Christmas’ helpers) which are very important characters of the Finnish Christmas tradition. They are small. They usually wear red jackets and pointy hats. They have long white beards like Father Christmas and they sneak around to find out if children have been good or naughty. Noa drew green googly eyes for one of them and had a little chat with them.