The Squeee

Wishing everyone a Merry Yule/Christmas/Hanukkah and a Happy New Year - or, as we say in Swedish, God Jul och Gott Nytt År! Hope you have a great holiday, regardless of denomination. :) In Sweden, we had our Christmas celebrations yesterday, but it's still a time to see the family and enjoy the season. Hopefully the snow sticks around until tomorrow!

December 23 is to Swedes what December 24 is to everyone who celebrate Christmas on the 25th: it's The Day Before. We have our julfirande on the 24th, so the day before it's done in places like the UK. As a Swede living in Britain, treating the 24th as, well, the 23rd is treated back home, is very strange indeed. If I work for a British company and spend Christmas in the UK, I have to book the day off if it falls on a weekday, because otherwise, you're expected to work. How can I be at work when I'm supposed to be celebrating Christmas?! Anyway, more about a Swedish Christmas tomorrow. Today, we light the fourth and final candle in the Advent chandelier, eat the penultimate chocolate in the calendar, watch the penultimate episode of the TV calendar, and prepare for tomorrow. This generally means starting to prepare food. I meant to write this post earlier in the day, but I was busy preparing food, see. ;)

I recently realised that there are certain times of year when I miss Sweden more than others, namely December. "But we have things leading up to Christmas here too!" said the Squeeze, not at all understanding there's a big difference. Yes, I can certainly light candles for Advent here too, that's not an issue. I can also make the same kind of home-made candy, and most of the Christmas food I like I can make in Britain too. But it's still not the same. Not just because it's warmer here and less chance of snow. Things like waiting for someone to burn down the big straw goat in Gävle (newspapers today report someone did this last night!), Twelfth Night, and ... Lucia . Lucia is something we all grow up with and is a tradition that you won't find outside Sweden, unless you go to the embassy or something. I can't just dress up and have my own one-person Lucia procession, because it just doesn't work. You have to be there, in Sweden, and I'm no

Greetings, new recruits! I'm Armitage Army [insert faux military rank here] Traxy, and this is my blog. Howdy! I'm posting this a few days ahead of the release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey , and this is written especially for newly hatched Richard Armitage fans who are now scouring the web trying to find information about that guy who plays Thorin Oakenshield , because he's such a brilliant actor. You know, this guy. Basically, I'd like to welcome you to the Dark Side, where so many of us have been for years. Here, have a cookie! No doubt you now require more information about the actor Richard Armitage and I'd like you to know that yes, he really is a great actor, and he's been around for years. As has his fanbase, nicknamed by someone's husband once upon a time as the Armitage Army. (Please don't ask him about this if you ever meet him. Everyone does it, it's really old.) You're a bit late in joining the party, but the party

Do you know what day they hand out the Nobel Prizes? Most Swedes will be able to tell you: 10 December, the Nobel Day - Nobeldagen . The Peace Prize is given out in Norway, but the rest (as far as I know) are given out in Stockholm. In the evening, the Nobel party (Nobelfesten) is televised, and people do enjoy watching the winners, the royal family, politicians and a bunch of others arrive at the City Hall in Stockholm. TV commentators will talk about who's who, who's wearing what, what the people who have just arrived and are now being shown to their seats are going to eat, and so on.

If all goes well, I anticipate there being a whole host of Swedish Ways posts this month, leading up to Christmas. Or jul (Yule) as we call it, because we're all Pagan Vikings at heart! :D Which is funny, because Christmas tends to be a fairly big deal in Sweden, despite it being an extremely secular society where you're generally seen as a little bit of a weirdo if you attend church regularly. Unless you're a pensioner, perhaps, or your parents forced you to do Confirmation studies when you were 14, despite your heartfelt assurances that it would be a waste of everyone's time. Churches seemed to be very popular in Germany, though. This one's from Schönwald-im-Schwarzwald.

Yesterday, it was the name day of everyone called Anders. There's a saying in Sweden, "Om Anders braskar så slaskar jul", roughly "If Anders is cold, Christmas will be wet", but in archaic language. It works the other way around too. If Anders[' name day] is cold or freezing, Christmas will be mild and rainy, but if it's mild and rainy on 30 November, Christmas will be cold and frosty - maybe even snowy if you're lucky. (Doesn't really work as well if you live in the northern part of the country, where you're probably pretty much guaranteed a snowy landscape from November onwards. Or maybe that's just a prejudice from us southerners.) Oh baby, it's cold outside. If I remember it correctly, it's nothing but a myth, but we still like to say it. Here, the day was fairly cold, starting with having to scrape frost off cars in the morning. Still not very cold, though, it was around -1°C when I left the house in the morning. If