At midnight on New Year’s Eve, we’re always up on the roof. The shoebox of an extension is still a bit of an eyesore and I wish it fit in with the old half of the house, but its flat roof is awesome for viewing fireworks.

Today, like every New Year’s Eve, we pulled out the big ladder and the whole family climbed up to spectate the fireworks all around us. We see everything the neighbours fire off, and the more distant neighbours, and people in nearby sports fields and school yards and other open areas, and even all the way to what I guess is Kista or something like that. Just after midnight the whole horizon is lit up.

This year for the first time I remembered to bring my camera, but I did not remember to read up on how to photograph fireworks, so the results are so-so. But they do bring back some of what it felt like to be there.

Christmas isn’t over yet but we’re running out of gingerbread cookies, so we made another batch. With just me and Ingrid working, it was less chaotic and more focused than our usual cookie sessions. And we ended up with more gingerbread men and women and far fewer sharks and crocodiles than when Adrian is involved.

Usually we start piling up the gifts under the tree the day before Christmas Eve but Nysse was all over the presents as soon as they started turning up, with claws and teeth, so we had to hide them away in the bedroom behind a closed door and only brought them out last minute. Only one or two packages got slightly chewed in the corners.

I am kind of proud of how I managed to wrap a large potted plant for Ingrid without breaking anything.

Lunch was the traditional devilled eggs, served with herring and an orange-avocado-feta-pistacho sallad, and vörtbröd.

Ingrid made a cream cheese Christmas tree for a starter. I didn’t think of taking any photos of the rest of the dinner, which consisted of the bean balls I always make for Christmas, potato gratin, brussel sprouts and a lingonberry sauce. I had planned for a cranberry sauce but there were no cranberries to be had in any of the three supermarkets I tried, neither fresh nor frozen. Lingonberries with orange peel didn’t taste half bad either.

The crinkling and crackling wrapping paper was an excellent cat toy. Nysse got half a roll of cheap wrapping paper, left over from some scouting activity, all for himself. That paper was kind of ugly to begin with so this was a good use for it.

Adrian of course evaluated all the larger parcels by weight and size and proportions, and tried to deduce which of the Lego sets on his wish list might be in there.

One more last-minute knitted Christmas ornament to give away, this time with an elephant pattern.

These balls were really quick and easy to make, and quite a lot of fun. Just four pattern repeats, so I’m done with it before the work has time to start feeling repetitive.

Last year when we put up the Christmas tree, Nysse climbed right up into it. The tree toppled, the poor cat was shocked, and a couple of our ornaments were broken.

The tree may have seemed like a safe and familiar place in an otherwise scarily new house. At the time, Nysse had been with us for just a few days, and he used to live in the countryside before moving in with us. Or maybe it was the opposite and he climbed up there because it was novel and exciting with all the shiny, sparkling ornaments.

So either he’s going to be much less likely to climb it this year, because he’s no longer insecure and looking for a familiar place, or he’s going to be much more interested, because he is more inclined to go exploring.

We’ve got the tree secured to hooks in the wall in two directions, just in case, so it might remain standing even if there is some not-too-energetic climbing. It’s only been a few days but it looks like the tree might be safe. Nysse goes batting at some of the baubles on the lower branches, where everything is inexpensive and cat-proof, and licks water from the container, but hasn’t been trying to climb the tree at all.

We decorated gingerbread cookies. Ingrid and I decorated hearts and trees and pigs. Adrian made bleeding sharks, stitched-up crocodiles, and Frankenstein’s monster with parts of different gingerbread men glued together.


Then he went on to even more innovative creations, like a two-headed giraffe, a tangle of teddy bears, and 3D dolphins.

In the evening we decorated the tree. Unpacking the decorations is the best part: “remember when we got this one!” and “oh, I’d forgotten about this one”.

Gingerbread cookies are an essential part of Christmas. We made this year’s batch this weekend.

We have a whole pile of cookie cutters. I’m a traditionalist and prefer the Christmas-themed shapes: the Christmas trees, stars and hearts and angels, and the traditional gingerbread man and woman. Pigs have a very decoration-friendly shape, and so do mitten-shaped cookies.

The stranger shapes include a set with tiny animals and a boat, which I believe is Noah’s Ark, kind of thematically appropriate – but it also a train engine and a car. This set gets used a lot because the small shapes fit so nicely in between the larger cookies.

Another set has more animals, which for some reason includes a crocodile and a shark. Who hasn’t heard of Christmas crocodiles? Adrian especially likes the shark and the crocodile, so we usually end up with a lot of those.

We found a bottle of last year’s glögg in the pantry. I don’t believe in best-before dates too much, so we opened and tried it.

Last year’s glögg flavour was mojito: glögg with a flavour of lime and mint. Quite a bizarre combination, since there is no overlap in ingredients between mojito and glögg. Well, apart from the sugar. And their flavours don’t match or complement each other, either. Mojito is fresh and cold and tart; glögg is warm and round and spicy.

The idea of mixing the two was not a good one. We tried it; I was the only one to want to taste it twice. Then we poured it down the drain.

Marketing people want everything to have “this season’s variety”. Clothes, shoes, Christmas gifts… and glögg. There’s rarely a point in having a favourite model of sandals, or even of socks, or of glögg, apparently, because when the old ones have run out and you want more, your favourite has already been retired in favour of something newer and shinier.

The book with knitting patterns had some with cats, so I had to make another Christmas ball.

Slightly glittery yarn in red and white seemed suitably Christmassy, but now that the ball is done, the cats look like demons with blood-red eyes and bloody paws.