Advent Calendar / 14 December
Help. I’ve got so caught up this year in blogging about Swedish Christmas traditions that I’m getting behind with my own!
I got my few overseas Christmas cards sent off on time last week, but then yesterday I “suddenly” realized that I only had a couple of days left before I also need to post all the European and Swedish ones, which I hadn’t even got started on…
This year I ended up with a mix of cards; ordering about half of them printed from one of my own photos, making a few myself at home (but not as many as I over-optimistically thought I would), using some bought earlier in the autumn at a market, and having to buy some more from the bookshop. There is of course nothing really wrong with that - except that in my case it means too many last minute decisions! (who shall get which card etc)
As Paul Simon says in one of his songs on the album Hearts and Bones: “Maybe I think too much”. (Only in my case there is probably no maybe about it.)
Note to self: Next year, just order enough copies of the same card for everyone!!!
Oh well, I’m almost done now; I’ll put the stamps on tomorrow.
The two cards I chose for you in this blog post were painted by Swedish artist Jenny Nyström (1854-1946). She became famous as the person who created the Swedish image of the jultomte on numerous Christmas cards and magazine covers, linking “Santa Claus” to the gnomes of Scandinavian folklore. Some of her classic cards are still reprinted and sent around every Christmas.
These two hardly belong to the most commonly seen, though. Both are old ones in a small size which I’m not sure is even allowed to send in the post any more. I have a whole bunch of these small old unwritten cards, all different (and most of them by less well known or even anonymous artists). I’ve had them for more than 30 years, and they seemed old to me even then. They belonged to either my grandmother or her sister.
