Mortens Aften

To be honest I try to make it Petes Day every day, or at least as much as humanly possible. Still, wouldn't it be glorious if there was an official day called Petes Day or if you had a day? I like the idea even if it's not a national holiday.

One day every year, today actually. Well it's not today, it's not until tomorrow. This is a pretty complicated day. Tonight, November 10, is "Mortens Evening" this is the eventful bit but tomorrow is actually "Mortens Day". The funny thing is the man the day is named after was actually not named Morten. His name was Martin, but this was back in the year 300 and something. Having taken the time to do a bit of research on this, I've found out that it was St. Martin who didn't want to become bishop.

So one day, on November 10 he hid on a sty where geese were kept but the geese made a lot of noise alarming the people looking for him and he was found and forced to become bishop. Apparently he made a decree that on November 11 everyone should kill and eat geese. As goose was such a large and expensive meal, it was later changed for the cheaper and smaller duck. I'm assuming that the reason why we now eat it on Mortens evening instead of Mortens Day is because every tradition changes over the years.

For many years Mortens Aften hasn't been celebrated or used commercially to sell things, but in recent years it's made a comeback. For my mother it's a test of what Christmas is going to be like. As per tradition my mother cooks a duck, does white and brown potatoes (coated in caramel), red cabbage and a rice pudding which isn't actually rice pudding but all this food is so Danish it doesn't have English words. I'll try to find recipes at some point. It was at such an event back in 2004 where I threw a hissy fit in the middle of dinner and stormed out in front of my ex sister in laws parents and my drunken aunt because my brothers brats were at their very worst and my brother did nothing about it.