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!

I was going to write a post, but then ... then someone posted a link to this video and a description seems sort of superfluous! ...Okay, maybe some things need explaining after all.

Today is the day we celebrate the life and works of Douglas Adams. Here's my choice of clothing for the day: (Obtained from Qwertee a while back.) The Squeeze was a darling this morning and volunteered bringing a towel with him to work as well, bless him. I'm probably more into observing Towel Day than he is, but he still does it. :)

Glad påsk! [ Source ] In Britain, Easter seems to only mean two bank holidays, chocolate eggs and Biblical adaptations on telly. In Sweden, aside from the extra days off work, the chocolate eggs and Charlton Heston, you would - at least when I was growing up - eat boiled eggs which you had painted in one way or another. Some days before, you would have brought in birch twigs and adorned it with coloured feathers and little egg-ornaments and things. Think tabletop Christmas tree and you're on the right lines. If you made sure to put water in the vase (and marbles to weigh it down so it wouldn't fall over), the twigs would sprout little green leaves in the indoor warmth, and if you've never smelled opening birch leaf buds, you don't know what you're missing.

How a Swede spent last night sort of dictates how Nyårsdagen (New Year's Day) is spent. If you were full up on drink and didn't get to bed until the early hours of the morning, you probably spend most of the day in bed, then take it very easy due to the inevitable hangover you're likely to have. Not so much if you took it easy. There is of course time to start working on those new year's resolutions ... Did you make any? I normally don't, because I don't see the point. Losing weight? Yeah, well, I need to do that regardless of if it's a new year or not. Quit smoking? Never smoked. Exercise more? See the bit about losing weight ... In Britain, if a red letter day falls on a weekend, the holiday is pushed to the next available Monday, so you get it back, meaning tomorrow is a Bank Holiday here. In Sweden, if a red letter day falls on a weekend, tough luck, you don't get it back, meaning today is a Sunday, tomorrow is a normal Monday. I much pref...

This is the first post of this year's theme, which is oh so imaginatively called: Swedish Ways . This is a theme focusing on the year in a Swedish calendar, with all those things we celebrate, when and why, or rather, how . There are a lot more things than eight days of note here, so let's get crackin' with the first one: Nyårsafton , or simply good ol' New Year's Eve in English. Figured it'd be easier to start off with that, rather than writing about New Year's Day tomorrow and having to either wait a year to explain what happened the night before, or having to explain it now and then again in a year's time, so I'm starting a day early, technically. When it comes to Swedes, in all likelihood, New Year's Eve will be spent in one of two ways: Binge drinking at a party or Quiet night at home in front of the telly

Hoping you have a fabulous day, wherever you are! :) And clickie here to hop over to Y I Mum and ogle a couple of very saucy santas ... :D

This is the final post in this year's series of highlighting the Pagan holidays. It has made me think more about the days in question, even if I haven't exactly done anything in particular to celebrate them. For a Pagan, I'm seriously secular! ;) Today, we celebrate Samhain , which is also known as the Pagan new year. The time between now and the Winter Solstice is a never-never land of sorts, because the new year doesn't start tomorrow morning, it starts in December. The lore says that on this day, the God draws his final breath. He is to be re-born in December, but meanwhile, he's indisposed, so to speak.

Today, we celebrate the Autumn Equinox in the northern hemisphere, the time when night and day are in perfect balance. We're heading toward winter now, meaning nights will be longer than days, but there is no need to fear the dark. There is a need to be slightly concerned about it, if you suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) - or "winter depression" as it's also known. (I got mine off mum, because the bleedin' thing is hereditary. Cheers, mum!) Take some vitamin D and use a light box for half an hour (or even 10 minutes) in the morning . The morning bit is really important: you're trying to stop the production of sleep hormone and get the body clock to realise it's daytime - using it at night won't work! Using it at all will really help, and also going out for a bit during the day time. Ain't no lightbulb like the good ol' sun, after all! As the days are growing shorter and the cold starts to creep in, I don't just get tired,...

Lammas , or Lughnasadh (Celtic), is celebrated either on 1 August or 2 August, and celebrates the first harvest. Personally, I celebrate it on 2 August and find Lammas a lot easier to spell. ;) Summer is still in full force, and will be for a while longer, but fruits are starting to ripen, fields are turning yellow and our kitchen gardens are bountiful with the treasures of Mother Nature. My favourite Pagan festivals are the harvest festivals, but that's because I like autumn. Around Mabon (the next holiday in the Wheel of the Year, i.e. the Autumn Equinox in September), we have the holiday as a pivot point between summer and autumn, but I've noticed the change more dramatically in Sweden. Before Mabon, it's basically summer. Then Mabon comes, and the trees quickly start turning yellow. For a harvest festival, I like to bake, even if it's just a little cake or something, as grains are one of the important things currently being harvested. Haven't made one today...

Today is the longest day of the year, the Summer Solstice - or Litha, as it's known in the Neo-Pagan community. The celebration of the longest day of the year has fallen out of fasion since Christianity was introduced ... except for in Scandinavia, where we're still stubbornly heathen in our ways and insist on celebrating Midsommar ("Midsummer", go fig) the first Friday after the solstice. Meaning back home, on Friday, there will be much merriment (read: drinking), and the traditional eating of new potatoes and matjessill (a particular spicing of pickled herring). If you've got children, it's likely there will also be dancing around the traditional midsommarstång - midsummer pole. If you needed convincing that the old solstice celebrations were a fertility ritual, look no further:

April 30th is a day steeped in tradition in Sweden. We call it Valborgsmässoafton (Valborg's Mass Eve) and it's tradition to light big bonfires and students put their graduation caps on and sing songs welcoming spring. Something about scaring witches away as well, I believe, but we're not that easily scared. There's Walpurgisnacht in Germany as well, but not exactly what the traditions are there, but I'm guessing it probably has the same Pagan roots as Valborg does. On Beltane, the Wiccan tradition is that the God is a young man who meets and falls in love with the Goddess. They unite, and she becomes pregnant. In nature, animal babies are starting to take their first gentle steps into the new, green world. Bonfires are traditional, especially leaping across them, to ensure fertility during the year.

Today, March 20th, is the day of the Spring Equinox, when day and night are equally long. Tomorrow, day is longer than night, which is a great relief to all us with SAD . This particular day is called Ostara in the Neopagan calendar and is a spring festival, named after the goddess Eostre, or Eastre, which indeed is where we get the name "Easter" from, not to mention the curiously un-Christian Easter traditions of eggs and bunnies. You could say Ostara the Neopagan Easter, and both the eggs and the hares or rabbits are symbols of fertility. With the light and warmth of spring, nature is reborn and both flora and fauna get their groove on. In the Wiccan Wheel of the Year story of the Godess and the God, Ostara is when the Goddess wakes up properly from her winter sleep and dresses the world in green. In nature, trees start to become green, spring flowers are blossoming and we can finally enjoy the first warm days of the year. I think the reason for remembering this holida...

Imbolc (2 February) is a Neopagan holiday that celebrates the coming of spring. While we might not be able to see it yet, nature is slowly starting to come back to life after the long hiatus of winter. This very much depends on where in the world you are, of course. In Sweden, the ground will probably still be fairly frozen, at least if you're in the northern half. South - meh, your mileage may vary. In Britain, we've got little green things starting to poke out of the soil already. Worth bearing in mind that Gerald Gardner, the founder of modern Paganism - or rather the founder of Wicca specifically, was British. If you're a Pagan in the southern hemisphere, I suppose you've got Lammas or Lughnasadh instead now, while we have to wait until August. Speaking of southern hemisphere - Australians, my thoughts are with you. First, the floods, now a ginormous cyclone headed straight for Queensland. Look after yourselves and stay safe! Like I said when posting about Y...

This morning was a special event: the first full lunar eclipse on the Winter Solstice for about 400 years. In Nottingham, there was a solid cloud cover, so not much to see, unfortunately. Also, I woke up with my right foot hurting like the blazes, so I couldn't try to see if I could spot it anyway. This is what a lunar eclipse looks like, if you haven't seen one before: First time I heard of one was maybe ten years ago or so, when I decided to set the clock in the middle of the night to watch it. I thought it would be a quick thing, like a solar eclipse (never seen one - there was a partial one in Sweden once, but again, cloud cover ... with rain), but it took such a long time that I went back to bed. When I got up around 6 or 7, the moon was still red! It goes on for hours ! If you have the time and patience to wait all through it, or even just a few minutes, it's an amazing astronomical display. :) I thought that I wouldn't join in with the Christmas wishes this ...

I'm a little bit late with this (sorry!), mainly due to having had a busy Xmas and having a less than charming cold at the same time. :( Hope you've all had a lovely time, celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, Yule, Kwanzaa, or whatever religious denomination floats your boat. I quite like the term "Xmas" because it's nicely unspecific, even though technically the X comes from the Greek letter pronounced "chi" or something, which is used when you start to spell "Christ", but still. Big letter X:es are good, they remind me of The X-Files . ;) Anyway. It's that time of year, and I'd like to wish everyone a splendidly Merry Xmas (retroactively) and a fantastically Happy New Year :D The little fella on the top was found somewhere online a number of years back and used to come out around this time of year at my old Thomas Anders fansite, Weidungs Welt! ... and I went and got him out again, along with this old photo manip: 'Tis t...