What do you mean there is no thirteenth day of Christmas? Where are you living, anyway?

Yes, yes, yesterday was the twelfth day of Christmas, with the celebration of the Epiphany, the day when the Magi (Melchior, Balthazar, and Caspar) arrived to visit Jesus as an infant. It is celebrated in many countries as an extension of the Christmas festivities and the official day to dismantle Christmas.




But not in for we in Sweden.....

And for that we can thank a Danish King called Knut. He was sainted by the pope in 1169, with his feast day being made 7th January (the first weekday after Christmas). This was the day that Swedes chose to end the holiday season. But in the sixteenth century, the church calendar was reformed and Knut's day was moved forward a week. As the Swedes had always been accustomed to ending their Christmas holidays on Knut's day, they solved the dilemma by extending the party and simply continued celebrating an extra week.

What eminently sensible idea. So we don't take down out lights, trees, decorations until next week. Which is just as well, really because it is still very dark and bitterly cold and we need all of the light and colour we can get. I don't complain about the two month long season.




As well as the tree, we still have the Christmas cards pinned to our bookshelf. They have come from friends all over the world and bring us a lot of joy. Christmas cards are a lovely way to let us know that we are in somebody else’s thoughts and they are a simple way to connect us with friends and family. When we start to receive these beautiful cards, they initially form a migration pattern across our home. We often open them at our kitchen table where we stand them up by the Advent lights. Then, when we start receiving more and more, they begin to be found all over our home wherever there is an empty space and inevitably get toppled over by a passing poodle.




I'll have to think of a better way to display them next year. I had thought of a ribbon strung across the wall, but many of the cards are "postcard" style with no fold, so what could we do with them? While it is nice to stand up Christmas cards on a table, they can be easily knocked over by small gusts of wind, or small furry paws. So we chose to pin them on the bookshelves so we could see them and know they'd be safe. I think I'll try and thread them on ribbon and make garlands out of them. But that's next year.




And at this time of the year, you can pick up some inexpensive decorations. I mostly have enough to keep me happy, but I had missed having a Nativity set. So I was tickled to find this little tealight candle holder. You just don't see Nativity sets around, as Christmas is much more about yule than Christ here.

I've tried to explain to a slightly bemused L-G how we set up the whole scene when I was a child. We'd buy straw from the local feed store and my gran would help us arrange it on the table and explain to us how each figure in a nativity scene has meaning, and the manner in which they are arranged was very important. I can't begin to tell you what a wonderful and special woman my gran was. I especially think of her at Christmas time. We just loved to do all of the set up. At that time, there were so many "no touch" Christmas decorations (thinking of all of the lovely blown glass balls we had on our tree), so it was nice for we children to be able to touch and set up the Nativity scene over and over again each year. And the competition among us for who would lay Jesus in the manger after Christmas Eve midnight mass was intense.







It seems, as the cold weather is here to stay. It was -22°C overnight (-8°F) so we stay as close to the warmth as we can. I did go out to feed the ducks with a vigorously protesting Lambi, but she ran home faster than you could possible believe after I distributed the last crumb to the poor birds.

I realise looking around me that I really need to tidy up — I just don't understand how a house can get messy when all you're doing is sitting on the sofa reading most of the time. Must be gnomes. I sure wish they'd learn to clean up after themselves. I'm about to start a new book today, having just finished reading the very delightful The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. It was such a wonderful story, set in post war Guernsey, told in a warm style and reminded me a lot of a cross between a Barbara Pym novel and the classic 84 Charing Cross Road. I was sorry when it ended, as I'd come to feel that the characters were a bit like family.

I frankly wanted to pack my bags and head off there myself to take in the atmosphere and history of the island. It also made me ponder the question of why letter writing seems to have gone out of fashion. It’s such a shame I think it needs to come back, don't you?