Everyone’s December traditions are different. How we celebrate varies across countries, religions, families, and individuals. Join us as we take you through our Drops December traditions, introducing you to the unique ways our cross-national and cross-lingual team celebrates. If Santa can visit every country in one night, then we can make our way around the world in this blog!
We start our journey in Estonia, with our legal advisor Lisett and QA Stephan. In Estonia, they light advent candles on the first Sunday of December, known as the first advent. They also bake Gingerbread and eat clementines! Our favourite Estonian tradition they shared with us is that on the days leading up to Christmas, children leave slippers next to their windows, hoping to wake up to a treat in the morning!
A similar tradition is observed in Romania with our CRM coordinator Adrian. Children prepare their best winter shoes, making sure they are clean and polished, for the expected arrival of Saint Nicolai. If the children have been well-behaved, they will receive a small present and sweets. If they’ve misbehaved they will receive a wooden stick!
Next up we visit beautiful Ukraine. Our Marketing lead Anna had some beautiful traditions to share, our favourite one being the tradition of Didukh. Didukh is the decoration of the house (a sheaf of wheat stalks) that symbolises the spirit of the ancestors, prosperity and wealth! Many believe that on these holy days the spirits of the ancestors return to spend time with their families. The Didukh is always placed under the family image in the most honourable place in the house!
As we continue our trip around the world, we land in the Philippines with our B2B Sales Lead, Hendi, who shared with us some wonderful New Year’s Eve traditions. The first of these traditions entails you jumping at midnight to make you taller. It is also believed that putting lots of coins into your pockets will make you rich. Lastly, it’s important to make lots of noise at midnight, in order to scare any bad spirits away!
From Asia, we make our way over to Africa, more specifically to South Africa with our Customer support specialist, Nikita! It's lovely and warm in the southern hemisphere during December so it's very common to spend Christmas eve on the beach having a lovely barbecue (braai)!
On our way back through Europe we’re stopping off in Hungary with Maja our Graphic Designer. Hungarians open their gifts on the 24th of December and it's believed that the baby Jesus leaves these gifts!
Have you enjoyed virtually visiting these countries with us? You can learn about over 50+ languages and cultures by downloading Drops and diving into the unique topics tailor-made for each culture.
Daisy Jones is the Social Media coordinator at Drops. She hails from the Bristol area, and has a Doodle named Stanley and a Staffy named Hank.
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"I like that you can switch between different subjects and topics constantly and it’s really easy to learn a lot of vocabulary very quickly! This works perfect for me because I can learn a lot of words but then practice sentence structure with my grandmother whose from Croatia"
"Fantastic app great opportunity to learn languages on your spare time. Drops makes it easy to learn and retain words to formulate sentences."
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"This app us the best and how I am doing Learning Ukraine is Helping me alot tnx"
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"Fun and interactive. Great for repetition!"
"Very engaging way of learning Yoruba in a stimulating way. Will be using to learn myself and to teach my child!"
"Amazing language learning tool. Excellent app for increasing vocabulary in your foreign language of choice. Useful for beginner, intermediate, and advanced learners. The repetition of the words makes them much easier to remember, and without the hassle of making your own flash cards. I have used Drops for two years now and have seen great results."
"Great little learning app! I've learned at least 5-10 new words in Spanish in my first 5 minutes. Easy to pick up and thorough."
"I have been desperate to find an app that really helps me learn Japanese and this is the best by far"
"I like that you can switch between different subjects and topics constantly and it’s really easy to learn a lot of vocabulary very quickly! This works perfect for me because I can learn a lot of words but then practice sentence structure with my grandmother whose from Croatia"
"Fantastic app great opportunity to learn languages on your spare time. Drops makes it easy to learn and retain words to formulate sentences."
"What an amazing app! I’ve tried several apps for language learning and I cannot recommend Drops enough. I don’t know how a short Drops session can teach me as much as 1 hour+ of focused use of other apps, it’s like magic."
"Love my fun language learning and practice with daily Drops sessions, and monthly Challenges to participate in, and quiz mode to test contextual learning - brilliant! So much thought, consideration and inclusivity has gone into the design and function of this app, I can't praise it highly enough."
"Definitely recommend! I'm using this to learn mandarin 10/10"
"This app us the best and how I am doing Learning Ukraine is Helping me alot tnx"
