Reindeer Is an Incredibly Stupid Animal

     Christmas has always been our holiday. It's what we prepared for and anticipated. We started well in early December by slowly cleaning the whole house. Every child had their own little calendar to see how many  more days there were until Christmas. In Finland, we celebrate on Christmas Eve. This has roots in history when Christmas Day was revered enough that it was inappropriate to have big celebrations on that day. You would generally go to an early morning sermon at your local church, and then come home. The rest of the day would be spent contemplating the importance of the day, and later maybe visiting with neighbors.

Vanaja Lutheran church. It is one of the newer medieval churches in Finland and was built in the 1400s. Many of my relatives and ancestor are buried in the old cemetery right next to the church.

     So Christmas Eve was for partying. We all knew that Santa is really from Northeastern Finland, and he of course visits every Finnish child on Christmas Eve. The preparation would start the day before, on the 23rd. We would go and find our Christmas tree. Our dad would take us, and we generally would drive to a wooded area somewhere where we knew the landowner. We would then walk around the woods looking for that perfect tree. My older brother always had the task of carrying the ax. We could never understand why our dad couldn't borrow someone's chainsaw for the occasion. It was cold and the day would start to get dark again around two in the afternoon. Our toes would always feel frozen, no matter what we were wearing. After the tree would be found and cut, we'd head back home, like a car full of icicles.
     Our mom also would make us clean the whole house. And we'd spend a considerable time baking. We take our Christmas celebration seriously, and made enough goodies to feed a small army.

"A Christmas Star", it has puff pastry and a prune jam inside. Very delicious.

Gingerbread cookies like grandma used to make.

   

     After cleaning and baking all day, we'd be exhausted and excited. We had a star that had a light inside that we would hang in front of the window. My mom loved candles, and they were everywhere. Not the big, nasty, smelly ones, but long and beautiful. All the Christmas cards we had received were displayed somewhere. The house would be ready, and everyone was starting to feel almost reverent.

      Come Christmas Eve morning, and my brother would bring the Christmas tree into the house. My sister remembers several near misses when we almost smashed different light fixtures while doing it. We'd set the tree in a stand, and first my dad would put up the candles in it. We had electric ones, since my mom was convinced that we'd burn down the apartment with real ones. We all agree now that she was right. We'd then decorate the tree. My mom says that she always wished for a tree that didn't look like a bunch of kids had decorated it, but she saw how much fun we had doing it, and didn't have the heart to change anything.

     Our great- grandmother had real candles in her tree, and mom always made her swear she wouldn't light them while we were visiting. 

Our candles. We loved them.

     After the tree was all dressed up, it was usually time to listen to the declaration of peace. For more than 700 years, a declaration of peace has been read in Turku, Finland at noon on Christmas Eve. It is an official start of the holiday, and essentially asks people to celebrate calmly and in peace. It also warns that anyone breaking the peace will be punished to the maximum extent of the law. This is still the case in Finland, where during the three day holiday, anyone breaking the law will receive the maximum penalty.

People have gathered at the Old Marketplace in Turku, Finland to listen to the declaration of peace.

     We would soon after go to sauna, and then have dinner. Before dinner, my dad always insisted that we read the Christmas story from the Bible. He didn't grow up in a religious home, and never really celebrated Christmas as a child. For him it was important to remember how the holiday started and be respectful of it. And then we would eat. And eat more and more and more. It was insane. There would be so much food, we'd be eating leftovers for three days, loving every minute of it. There was a pork butt roast, and 'mokko', and carrot casserole. My mom would make sure everyone got something they wished for. This was not a small thing, since there were seven of us. My older brother always wanted pickled small onions. I always wanted cold smoked salmon and pickled herring. My sister wanted mushrooms. We set the table with all the best china we had, and for once had a table cloth and candles on the table. It was beautiful and delicious.

     After overeating for quite awhile, the main event would come. There would be a loud knock on the door, and we could hear someone asking  if all the children had been good. We all knew who it would be. Soon Santa Clause, or 'Joulupukki' in Finnish, would be sitting in our living room, talking to us. He would always had a large sack full of presents for us. We'd sing to him first, and then he would give us our presents. When we were little, we would usually be frightened of this strange, bearded man who demanded to know about our behavior. But as we got older, it was fun to have him visit. He would never stay long, since he was so busy that night, but every Finnish child would have him visit. It is one of the most cherished traditions we have. 

      Our favorite part was always opening the presents. We love to play games, and watch movies together, so we would usually get lots of games. We'd then spend most of the night playing together, and later maybe watching a movie. A couple of our favorite games are Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit, and we can spend days playing them together. Christmas Eve was always the one night nobody had to go to bed, even my baby brother and our little sister. Eventually they would fall asleep somewhere, and we'd take them to bed, and continue playing and eating. 

     We all agree that this has always been our favorite time of year. We love to spend Christmas together. Now that I live so far away, we spend a lot of time on Skype talking. I have difficult time getting Christmas dinner done between all the time I spend on the computer talking to my family. We usually call my parents when we my children are opening their presents, so that grandma and grandpa can be a part of it. Of course it's not the same thing as them being here, or us being there. But it's the next best thing.

A side note: since I have no emotional connection to the American Thanksgiving, I didn't want to write about it. I conducted a couple of very nice and lengthy conversations with my parents and five out of my six siblings through Skype. God bless whoever invented that thing. Only my little sister wasn't available, since she's in Sweden. 

Crazy Old Ladies

I guess we have a bit of a temper problem. We are proud and stubborn to the point of idiocy. And we are always right, every single one of us. It makes for a bit of a mess sometimes.

My great- grandmother Anna is in the middle. On the left is her mother Vilhelmiina, holding her sister Hilja. On the right is her sister Elli, and in the back is her sister Impi, who is the sister in this story. 

My great- grandmother Anna was no different. She was one of the most complicated people I have ever known. As a child, I was scared of her. I'd go visit her with my family, and children were expected to shake hands with her and curtsy or bow, and then sit quietly until she asked you something. At the end of the school year, she'd want to know all the details about your grades. And you better have a good explanation if your grades weren't up to her standards. I remember my cousin and my brother having to explain themselves to her several times. 

My great- grandmother was a hard worker. She had a farm that she inherited from her parents. She never let my great- grandfather forget that it was hers and not his. He never even had the keys to the house. He was an alcoholic, so the majority of responsibility was on her shoulders. She grew sugar beets as a cash crop, and had an enormous kitchen garden. She was an excellent gardener, and locally quite famous for it. She worked long hours every day but Sunday, and as far as I know, never took a vacation. She chopped her own firewood until she was well into her 90s, and if you ever tried to offer to help her, she would smack you in the back of your head. 

She was also one of the most generous people I have ever known. Back during the war, she took in several relatives from different cities that were being bombed, and housed and fed them for years. She also expanded her kitchen garden to several acres so that she could send food to all of her relatives who lived in the bombed cities and couldn't get away. 

My great- grandmother had 15-25 extra people living in this house at any given time during the war. It has two small bedrooms upstairs, and two downstairs. 

After the war, a boy, a cousin of some sort, stayed with her family. His parents had died in the war, and he had nowhere to go. She raised him as one of her own, even though she already had five children, and there were other relatives still living with them all. The story goes that he got a cut on one of his toes. Nobody remembers what happened, and who said what, but my great- grandmother and one of her sisters disagreed on weather or not the boy should be taken to a doctor. They didn't really have any money, so it would have been difficult for them to do so. The boy's toe ended up getting a bad infection, and it had to be amputated. The sister who wanted to take the boy to the doctor got so upset at the other sister, that even though they lived next door to each other, they didn't speak to each other for eight years. If one was outside, the other would go inside. If one of them saw the other in the local store, they would go home rather than be in the same building at the same time. The story doesn't tell if they ever started communicating again, or truly forgave each other, but they never were really friends again. 

This is my family, a bunch of stubborn, crouchy, and crazy people.