Christmas In Lithuania: 10+ Easy Holiday Words

How much do you know about celebrating Christmas in Lithuania? It’s that time of the year again, and we bet that you can feel the excitement in the air! With this being said, today’s post will walk you through the most native ways to greet someone in the Lithuanian language like a real pro. If you are up for that, then keep reading below!

Many people around the world think of Christmas as one solitary, snowy day for celebration in December, with kids around the neighborhood singing Christmas carols, houses lit up by Christmas lights in preparation for their annual Christmas party, and families are gathering around the table on Christmas Eve, exchanging gifts while decorating their homes with traditional ornaments. But there is more to Christmas than meets the eye. In different countries around the world, Christmas is much more than that – sometimes even celebrated at different times and on different dates. In this article, we will have a look at the most common and unusual Christmas traditions in Lithuania.

 

When Do People Celebrate Christmas In Lithuania?

As in most other countries around the world, Christmas in Lithuania is celebrated on December 25th.

Christmas is preceded by the 40 day period called Advent. Advent is a Christian holiday that lasts for four weeks before Christmas. It is celebrated with a combination of prayer and waiting, which symbolizes the spiritual journey of Christians to come closer to God. It is a very important part of Christian history, and it is often celebrated with lots of different traditions. Some people will use Advent calendars or countdown timers to help them prepare for Christmas.

Advent comes from the Latin word adventus, which means “arrival” or “coming.”

The advent season is a beautiful time of year because there’s something about the anticipation of Christmas that fills our hearts with hope and joy. But where did this tradition come from?

The origin of the Advent Season can be traced back to Pope Gregory in the sixth century A.D, who encouraged Christians to celebrate all twelve days of Christmas, or, rather, “the 12 Days of Christ”.

Every year, people in different parts of the world eat particular foods during the Advent season. These foods vary depending on where you live and what traditions you belong to. During the Advent Season, people traditionally eat bread and potato, which staple items of food in Lithuania.

 

Common Lithuanian Christmas Traditions

Lithuania has a lot of unique holidays and events, but its Christmas season stands out from the rest of the holidays celebrated in this country. The Christmas traditions of Lithuania date back to the 17th century. The most popular one is the Christmas tree, which symbolizes the light of God that shines and brings peace and hope for all people in the world.

On Christmas Eve, all Lithuanian families gather around the Christmas table with their family members and loved ones and sing carols together. It is also a time when people share food and gifts with each other. There are also like hanging decorations on Christmas trees, wrapping presents around them, making them into snowflakes, or putting a wreath on the door.

Lithuania is a country with beautiful northern nature, unique culture, and historical heritage. It is famous for its winter traditions, including lighting Christmas trees around churches or in public areas at night time during Christmas Eve and spreading greenery in other places.

 

Popular Lithuanian Christmas Foods

At the center of the table for Christmas dinner is a plate of Christmas wafers – one wafer for each person at the meal. In some parts of Lithuania, the wafers have the scene of the birth of Jesus on them.

The meal starts when the first stars can be seen in the night sky. If it’s cloudy, the ‘head of the house’ decides when the meal will start! The wafers are offered to each person at the table, and Christmas greetings are exchanged. Sometimes an apple is also cut into as many people at the meal and is shared. This remembers the apple eaten in the Garden of Eden.

The Kūčios meal normally has twelve dishes – one for each of Jesus’s followers. None of the dishes contain meat (and some people also don’t have milk or eggs in them).

Traditional and popular dishes include fish (often herring), kūčiukai (small sweet pastries) normally soaked in poppy seed milk (poppy milk is milk made of poppy seeds), kisielius (a drink made from cranberries), dried fruit soup, beet soup (often with mushroom-filled dumplings in it), vegetable salad, mushrooms, boiled or baked potatoes, sauerkraut, a kind of wheat porridge with honey and bread. Normally water or homemade cider is drunk with the meal.

Sweet dishes are also often eaten including kissel (a fruit soup/jelly thickened with potato flour) and stewed fruit compote.

 

Words And Phrases Related To Christmas

In this section, we’ll try to introduce you to some common Lithuanian words and phrases related to Christmas that you’ll definitely need to know if you plan on spending the Christmas holidays in Lithuania, so stay tuned and check out the table below.

EnglishLithuanian
Christmas treeKalėdų eglutė
Christmas DayKalėdų dieną
Christmas EveKūčios
Christmas periodKalėdų laikotarpis
Christmas spiritKalėdų dvasia
Christmas mealKūčių valgis
Christmas celebrationKalėdų šventė
cranberry puddingspanguolių pudingas
mulled winekaršto vyno
Christmas waferKalėdinis vaflis
Merry Christmaslinksmų Kalėdų
handmade giftsrankų darbo dovanos
mistletoeamalas
presentpateikti
Santa ClausSanta Claus
winter solsticežiemos saulėgrįža
AdventAdventas
religious holidayreliginė šventė
epiphany holidayEpifanijos šventė

 

Have A Perfect Lithuanian Christmas With Ling App

Christmas in Lithuania

As we reach this part of the post, we hope that you were able to discover all there is to know about the Christmas season in Lithuania. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to read our other related posts, like how to greet a Merry Christmas in Tagalog and Cantonese. The Ling App is a platform that helps you learn Lithuanian with gamification. It has more than 60 languages to choose from, audio content, and interactive exercises.

Ling App by Simya Solutions is not just an app for learning Lithuanian but also a ton of fun. In addition to the gamified environment, it has an easy-to-use interface and can be accessed on smartphones, tablets, and computers, and it provides you with an auditory, visual, and tactile experience that helps you learn Lithuanian in no time at all.

Learning has never been easier with the Ling App! It’s a game, so join now and learn a new language with Ling anywhere in the world!

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