Midsummer day’s picnic in Hammarskog. Lots of food, thereafter a bit of a food coma, and after that Ingrid and Adrian prepared quizzes for us. Ingrid won Adrian’s quiz, while I won hers.



(Adrian took this last photo, after decorating me with his cap.)

Midsummer lunch, with herring and eggs and new potatoes. And a decadent strawberry and elderflower cake.

In the evening, Ingrid and Eric watched the movie Midsummer. They’re the only two in this family who like scary movies.

The Christmas tree is looking dull and droopy, and its needles are curling up. Time to throw it out.

It’s funny how much Christmas cheer it can bring when we put it up, and after two weeks it feels just like another piece of furniture.

We had Christmas gifts, somewhat too much Christmas food, and a new batch of gingerbread cookies.

I enjoy the run-up to Christmas more than Christmas Eve itself. Advent has all the good stuff – the lights, the decorations, the baking and then the eating of the baking – without the nearly hectic, keyed-up quality of Christmas itself. Christmas is tiring. Adrian is over-hyped about presents. My mum needs entertaining all day long, so I must keep up an even stream of activities and conversation, but only talk about topics that I don’t really care about because the odds are that I’ll get a snippy negative reply back.

(Ingrid took this photo.)

The first gifts have materialized under the tree, and Adrian can barely contain his excitement. Or rather, he cannot. He can not shut up about the gifts, to the point that I am getting very fed up with it.

Two of the gifts have his name on them, and he is guessing at what might be in there. He set a rule for himself that he today can only look at the gifts, not pick them up to weigh them or shake them. That’s only allowed on Christmas Eve.

But he allowed himself to hold up other things to the wrapped packages to compare their sizes. Look, one is suspiciously similar in size to a Nintendo Switch game sleeve (and Pokemon Sword is at the top of his list), while another matches a series of comic books where we have books 1 and 2, and book 3 has recently been published.

We have a tree. The house immediately feels more festive.

I read an article in a magazine recently about the history of advent stars, starting with the Moravian stars in Germany in the late 19th century and spreading into Sweden, among other places. The article quoted an ethnologist who commented on the current habit of hanging several such stars in one’s home and described it as a sign of wastefulness, wanting much of everything, and as an American ideal leaking in. As opposed to proper Swedish, Lutheran culture where thou shalt not have any fun, I guess.

Vårt välstånd gör oss mer slösaktiga, kanske vi kan säga. Just nu vill vi ha stjärnor och ljusstakar både inomhus, i trädgården och på balkongen. Det amerikanska idealet sipprar in. Vi befinner oss fortfarande i slöseriet och vill ha mycket av allt. Frågan är hur och om det kommer att förändras.

Perhaps the ethnologist lives in a lit-up inner city. Out here in the suburbs the evenings are dark. Heck, even the afternoons are dark, and sometimes there is not much light even in the middle of the day. (Stockholm has seen zero hours of sunlight thus far in December, which is not normal and not fun. This video (in Swedish) by SMHI will tell you more.) And we hang up advent stars and string lights and other kinds of Christmas lights to battle the darkness and bring some light into our lives. So that ethnologist can take her snobbish views and go get stuffed.

This is what happens to gingerbread cookies in a household full of people who like order. They get sorted by shape, and stacked. Small hearts, large hearts, left-facing pigs, right-facing pigs, and numerous piles of small stars and circles made from the scraps of dough between the larger cookies.

This looked satisfying but later turned out to be not a very good idea. At least not when the cookies are stacked when they are still warm. Because this way the steam can’t evaporate and the cookies end up soft rather than crisp. Unfortunately we only discovered this when we had finished decorating. I put the undecorated ones back in the oven to dry them out, but you can’t heat the decorated ones because the icing goes all runny. So we will be eating soft gingerbread cookies this year.

Ingrid is a skilled decorator and makes the most fancy ones, like the Christmas trees here. Adrian likes lots of icing on his, and preferably in colour, not in white.

I like understated decorations, mostly in white.

One Christmas we got a truck-shaped cookie cutter from Mathem (the online grocery store). I guess we are valued customers or something. It’s one of Adrian’s favourites, and Ingrid made an actual Mathem truck cookie for him.

This is Adrian’s photo of the cookies he liked best: a Santa couple, a very Grinchy Grinch, and a donut with extra everything.

We made gingerbread cookies. Ingrid joined us for a while but not long enough for me to catch her in photos.

The dough was softer and stickier than usual so we had trouble getting the cookies off the table and onto the baking sheets. And the first batch got slightly burned. But once we had kneaded in more flour into the dough and adjusted the oven, the rest came out delicious.

I prefer the traditional shapes – the hearts, Christmas trees, and stars. They’re mostly convex, easy to handle, and are well suited for decorating.

The advent calendar is up.

This year it is fully activity-based. I’ve gradually been moving in this direction over the last few years anyway: the kids need no toys or other stuff, not even socks or underwear. Not even pencils or little funny erasers or hair bands. And not even chocolates or raisins or other small snacks, because Ingrid already took matters in her own hands and bought chocolate calendars for both herself and Adrian. (An Oreo calendar for her, a Lindt milk chocolate calendar for him.) I think they’re close to outgrowing this thing, but Adrian was still looking forward to it, so here it is.

There is no point in trying to turn baking lussebullar or gingerbread cookies into a calendar activity – that kind of thing needs to be planned together with the whole family. The calendar activities are all small-scale and low-stakes. Take a Christmas photo of yourself. Discuss: what if superheroes had to do Santa’s job. Look at photos from past Christmases.

The little letters on the rolled-up activity cards help me keep track which one is which, in case some activity still ends up on an unsuitable day.