Dreaming in English

One morning last week I woke up from a sequence of nightmare-ish dreams, and since I wasn't in a hurry to get up I took the time to jot down some notes about it in a note-pad I keep beside my bed. I did this still in a kind of half-asleep state of mind.

I did not look at the dream notes again until last night, when writing an email to a friend in the English-speaking world. Nothing particular struck me about it until after I had already sent that email off. Then I glanced at the notes again before returning the notebook to its place by the bed... and it hit me:

My original notes about the dream were all in English. Moreover, they contained certain puns and phrases that were quite essential to my understanding of the dream, but that I would have difficulties finding good translations for in Swedish. I can only conclude that the dream itself must have been in English, too, even though I'm pretty sure it very much had its background in my present Swedish life!

Getting curious what the dream was about? Well, part of it had to do with being told (in the dream) to take a course in management, to be able to deal with a new job that people wanted me to take on, but which I myself didn't want and didn't consider myself the right person for. I'm pretty sure this feeling of mine has to do with certain "jobs" that have landed on me after my dad's health started to rapidly deteriorate and mum died. It's all been too much (still is), and I'm not really managing very well at all. In the Swedish language however, we don't have one word that covers the whole span of the English word manage...

Quotation of the Week (50/09)

Age is an issue of mind over matter.

If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.

Mark Twain

For Goodness Sake

I didn't go into town yesterday because it rained. So I missed out on the grand opening of Santaland in the Market Square. Never mind - I could read all about it in my morning newspaper anyway... As  I mentioned in my Tuesday post, in later decades our traditions have become more and more influenced by the American ones; so this is the kind of Santaland where you come and sit on Santa's lap and give him your wishlist. (In the old days, in this country, you had to send your list by mail; Santa did not go anywhere until Christmas Eve!)

There was an interview in the paper with a young man who apparently enjoyed this privilege, 5½ years old. Unfortunately he had left his list at home, but he remembered what was on it anyway. The most interesting part of the interview to me was this: 

He adds that he well deserves his Christmas gifts.
'I've been good all year,' he says in a serious voice.

Let's just hope his parents can actually afford the new computer and games that were on the wishlist...


The picture of the reindeer was taken on another day recently, in a supermarket.

The Return of the Gnomes

I mentioned in a previous post this week, about my "issues with Santa", that for a number of years I more or less banished all Santa or tomte/gnome figures from the Christmas decorations in my own home. This was from when I moved away from home at the age of 20 and a number of years onwards. It wasn't really that I got fanatic and threw a whole bunch out - I just didn't invite any to move in with me!

In my birth family, church visits, crib, Bible readings or hymns, were not part of our Christmas traditions (while Santa/gnome figures were). When I became a Christian (at the age of 16), and when I got my own home a few years later, I wanted to shift focus. However, I always spent the actual Christmas with family, and for the first 1½ decade I had to travel to do so. That's one reason why the time of Advent became "my own" Christmas celebrations; while the actual holidays remained sort of a separate and secular family event. This probably contributed to keeping the gnomes away from my flat, too... The place was empty at Christmas with no food in the larder for them and not even a Christmas tree!

Then I moved, and then my parents moved too, and habits changed a bit. I spent more of Christmas in my own home, and sometimes also with single friends. One next-entrance-friend who fills her own home with myriads of gnomes at Christmas found my Santa/gnome-free Christmas a bit odd. One Christmas I got a package from her which contained  a candle-holder surrounded by five little gnomes. A note came with the package: These gnomes claimed to be refugees looking for a home... What could I say? That there was no room for them at the inn?! Of course I had to let them stay...

As you might guess, once you let more than one gnome into your house (and especially of course if they are of opposite sex, as these were - see the first picture above), they multiply...!



As revenge, next time my friend went away for Christmas and left me in charge of her potted plants and Christmas tree, I planted half a dozen extra gnomes around her flat (in places you would not normally put them). Then of course next time I went away and left her in possession of my key... well, surprise surprise... some of them had come back to me...

Now last summer I moved away from her, and we no longer have keys to each others' flats. That might possibly have stopped the gnomes from migrating back and forth between us, but I'm not entirely sure it will stop new specimens from appearing...!

I still don't allow my gnomes to come up to the flat until just a day or two before Christmas though. Until then they have to stay in their box in the cellar. They may then stay until after New Year, when my former next-entrance-neighbour still usually comes to visit...

Quotation of the Week (49/09)

A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.
G.K. Chesterton

My Issues With "Santa"

Last week a Christmassy post at Simply Heather's blog set a rather complicated line of thoughts in motion in my head. I promised a more full explanation to a short comment I made, and this post is the result. I don't really wish to argue with the point Heather was trying to make though. That might work just fine for some readers even if it doesn't for me. It all depends on what images we have in our own head to begin with...

I think I will need to begin with certain differences between the Father Christmas or Santa Claus of the English/American tradition and the Swedish one. First of all, while you use the word Christmas, referring to the birth of Christ as centre of the holiday, the origin of the Swedish word jul has nothing to do with Christ. There is a corresponding old English word you may recognise - Yule, or yuletide, which is of pre-Christian origin. (Links go to Wikipedia articles.)

Our equivalent of Father Christmas (nowadays they're pretty much mixed up, because we get so much of British/American culture via television) is Jultomten.

In old Swedish folklore, a tomte is a fairytale figure for which the best equivalent in British folklore is probably brownie. A kind of hobgoblin or gnome are other possible translations. Basically he was a figure that lived in secret on a farm and could be of great help if you kept on the good side of him, but could play nasty tricks on you if you didn't. At Yuletide/Christmas it was customary, for example, to set out a dish of porridge and milk for the tomte; outside on the ground, or in the barn, or some place like that.

In the late 19th or early 20th century, it was a Swedish artist Jenny Nyström who created the image of the traditional Swedish "jultomte". She introduced the typical pictures that are still very popular on our Christmas cards. Below is one of them, which also includes a buck (he-goat), which in turn also belongs in the old traditions.

Before Tomten came into our Christmas gifts tradition, the gifts were delivered by a Yule Buck, or someone wearing a buck-mask, or neighbours etc would knock on the door and just throw in presents anonymously on Christmas Eve. Later on, the tomte got mixed up in this and the image blended with that of St Nicholaus/St Claus/Father Christmas from other European countries.

Tomten/Father Christmas still comes to call in person on Christmas Eve, instead of coming invisibly through the chimney in the middle of the night as he does in the English-speaking world. Here he traditionally knocks on the door, and someone wearing an extremely ugly and scary mask enters and begins by asking in a muffled and severe voice: "Are there any good children in the house?"

Now this is where my issuses with "Santa" or Tomten begin! Besides the man looking really scary, his question indicates that if you have not been good enough, you won't be worthy of his gifts. Moreover, parents know how to use this line of arguing too, especially in the months before Christmas: "If you don't behave, Tomten will know, and there won't be any Christmas presents!"

I don't remember at what age I began to suspect that Tomten was just my grandfather or uncle or someone else dressing up and hiding under that mask.  (The traditional way of getting away with this trickery is that some grown-up will suddenly decide they have to go out and buy a newspaper in the midst of the festivities. Grown-ups do so many strange things that children probably rarely question this odd behaviour.) What I do know is that the first dream or nightmare that I can remember from my childhood was one where I dreamt that Tomten came, and asked his question  - "Are there any good children here?" - and my mother (I think it was my mother, in the dream) said: NO...

This is why the image of the child's faith in Santa does not work for me as an image of faith in God.

This is also why, for many years after I became a Christian, I banished all tomte-decorations in my own home for Christmas. And if I had had children of my own, I don't think I would have agreed to try to make them believe for a moment that there was a real Santa/tomte. Since I never had children, however, that remains a theoretical standpoint...

Unfortunately, there seems to be quite a few people who got stuck from childhood on with an image of God which all too much resembles my childhood image of  Santa/Tomten: The old masked man with the beard whose first question is if we've been good enough to deserve his gifts. And if that is your image of God, then I say: No wonder if faith fails you when times get rough, and you discover that in fact all over the world a lot of good people suffer, while villains seem to thrive and get away with murder (quite literally).

But that is not the true Christian image of God at all. The true image of God is found in Christ, who stepped right into all the human suffering and took it upon himself to bring us back the gift of eternal life, without asking if we've been good enough. None of us have, that's the problem. Every one of us has a certain standard of "good" inscribed in our hearts but also the awareness that we keep failing to live up to it. Some come closer than others but still not 100%. Even small children have that awareness.

The message of Christmas is not: Try harder!
The message of Christmas is: Don't be afraid, because help will be given.

The angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David's a Saviour has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in strips of cloth and lying in a manger."
Luke 2:10-12

What a strange sign to announce that help is on its way: Can you imagine anything more helpless than a newborn baby? Landing on a bed of straw in a stable on top of all, instead of on a bed of silk or fine linen in a ruler's castle.

One thing for sure: A lot of people for various reasons won't find him "good enough". But he will know as much as anyone about the conditions and struggles of ordinary people...




PS. A few Santa/tomte figures did find their way back into my Christmas decorations later on in my life. I will return to that in another post...

Not Quite as Planned

If you would like to get a feeling of what 1st Advent Sunday should be like, go to the previous post: A Swedish Advent Hymn. If you want to know what it was actually like for me, this year, stay here.

That I would not be going to church to sing Advent hymns, that much I knew beforehand. The closest I got to a church was that on the way to my dad's house, we (my brother and I) went up to the churchyard  in that village to have a look at the headstone on our mum's grave, which was put up after we were there last. When we got there we were at first greatly surprised to find the car park full and cars parked alongside the road too, because we had by then completely forgotten that it was Sunday at all, and 1st Advent Sunday on top of that...! This because before going to the churchyard we had also been to a store in town to get various technical and plumbing emergency things related to unpleasant discoveries my brother had made at the house when arriving there Saturday afternoon. Namely that there was 3 cm of sewage water on the floor in the old laundry room in the cellar and problems with one of the toilets upstairs...

My major contribution at dad's house was bringing food on the table (most of it I had prepared beforehand) and washing the dishes afterwards, and going through a pile of bills etc. I also managed to find the electric Advent candle holder and a place for it where dad can actually see it. That is actually just about what I can manage in one day (with chronic pain problems in neck-shoulder-arm.)

My brother had a much tougher afternoon trying to fix the flood situation. It turned out it was too big a problem to be solved by the small pump we had bought for the purpose. Pofessional help would have to be called in the next day (today). This however still involved trying to make the flooded room accessible for the professional people. Which meant my brother still had to spend the whole afternoon (several hours) in the cellar, clearing that room from old garden furniture and two sacks full of other various moldy rubbish. One huge problem that we are facing is that our parents rarely threw away anything, ever - Dad's philosophy always having been that as soon as you get rid of something, the next day you'll find yourself in need of that very thing; so he always preferred to be on the safe side...

When I got home in the evening, it was without knowing if my brother would be able to sort the emergency situation out before he had to go back home at noon today (he lives 300 km away). There is also a list of other unsolved big problems of various emergency degree, one or two which my brother had meant to take care of this weekend before he knew about the even more important emergency. Just the mere awareness of the list gave me a literally sleepless night last night. My own computer situation has not even made it to the list yet! (In case anyone missed it, my desktop computer died a couple of weeks ago and the laptop is not very well either.)

However, at noon today my brother called to say the plumbers had been there with their machinery and cleared the pipes and dealt with the flood etc. So a huge sigh of relief, even though a number of other problems still remain.

We have a saying in Swedish that would translate something like "fortune in the midst of bad luck". (I can't think of an exact English equivalent - if someone can, please share.) I guess that's how we have to think of it. Had my brother not come here this weekend, the situation could have got much worse before anyone noticed, because normally now no one else ever goes down into the cellar...

 

A Swedish Advent Hymn

Traditionally, 1st Advent Sunday in Sweden draws more people to church than any other Sunday in the whole year. There are certain hymns which are almost only sung in the month of December, and most of them are of the "grand" kind, like this one:



The lyrics are from the Gospel of Matthew 21:9 - the song the people of Jerusalem sang when Jesus rode into town on a donkey:

Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest!

Hosanna is a Hebrew expression meaning "Save!" which became an exclamation of praise.
(Comment in the New International Version of the Bible.)

Advent Candles

Tomorrow is the first of the four Advent Sundays leading up to Christmas. So this weekend we light the first of the four candles in the special advent candle holder. These too come in different shapes. In Sweden though, all four candles are traditionally placed in a row; while in some other countries, like Germany, I know that the typical advent candle holder is instead in the shape of a wreath.

The one above is mine, a rather modern one, bought only a few years ago. I took the picture yesterday evening in my living room. I'm afraid it turned out a bit blurry, but never mind. 

The advent candle holder below is an older and more traditional one that my parents always used. This kind is shaped like a box, with a handle on each side, and traditionally you fill it with white moss, and some other decorations on top of that if you wish.



Filling a candle holder with moss etc is a bit of a fire hazard though, and that is why I in later years have abandoned that tradition. (Although of course the shops nowadays sell specially prepared moss that is not supposed to burn; but then it is drenched with chemicals instead.)  As you can see in the first picture I have some decorations on my holder too, but as the candles burn lower, I remove those.

As you light the first candle the first week, then the second the next week, then the third, then the fourth... When you get to the 4th Sunday, the candles will be in the shape of a "stair", the first candle by then very short and the last one still high. You don't really see that in the picture of my parents' candle holder, because after the 4th Sunday, they used to make a fuss of getting the candles even again. Which means, of course, blowing out the first one, until the next one has got down to the same size as that one, and then blow out the second one and wait for the third etc... I never understood why they bothered, and I never do that. One thing I can't stand however is if the first candle is burned down, and someone just puts in a new tall one in its place. Looks all wrong to me! At first chance, I'd be there to rearrange them! - LOL - We all have our own hang-ups!

Tomorrow, my brother and I will try and see if we can find the "advent stuff" in some closet in dad's house and arrange a bit of time-of-the-year atmosphere there, too. This used to be mum's job, so it will no doubt be a strange feeling...

Preparations Are Proceeding...

Preparations for 1st Advent Sunday are proceeding.
Today they were putting up the lights in the Christmas tree in the Market Square.



The Christmas Market stalls are also in place.
These days, commerce is going on around the week. In my childhood and youth, no shops were open on Sundays. 1st Advent Sunday used to be "Window Shopping Day". The shops were closed, but they had all made their Christmas displays. People went into town just to look although nothing was open. (Writing down memories like that always makes me feel about a hundred years old!)



(Some) Christmas Cards are cheap, but the postage is not!
I ordered mine via the internet yesterday, to be printed from one of my own photos.




My kitchen window.
A lot of people change curtains for the Christmas season, especially in the kitchen. Red brings warmth and colour into the cold and colourless darkness of winter. I prefer mine to be with relatively neutral pattern as I often keep them up until the end of February.

In almost every window in December and until a week or two into January, you will also see the electric candles and/or an advent star. Nowadays they come in all sizes, shapes and colours. The orange star made of paper to me is the "classical" one - the kind we had in my home when I grew up. It gives a soft warm glow and it's the kind I still want in my kitchen window. Some people prefer more expensive stars made of wood, or straw, or metal, or whatever. There is no lack of alternatives, whether you want traditional or more modern varieties.