Today is Advent Sunday, which marks the beginning of Advent. Advent has mostly lost its original religious meaning here in Sweden and is, effectively, “the time of waiting for Christmas”.

Thus, Advent Sunday and the first weekend of Advent is the time for hanging up Christmas decorations and lights. At home, that is: shops and businesses have had theirs up for weeks already (since they cleared out all the Halloween stuff). After weeks of creeping, gradually increasing darkness, there is just a little bit more light out there. I love the way our neighbourhood looks, with sparkles of light in just about every window.

We have our two advent stars that I bought last year, but not much more in the way of decorations. I don’t like visual noise, our living room feels cluttered already, and traditions are not very important to me. But I think Ingrid would enjoy having a bit more Christmas feeling at home. She’s been pointing out every single Christmas tree, Santa and fake snowman we’ve passed. I guess I will try to figure out some way to introduce some more Christmas cheer here. If not in time for this Christmas, then definitely for next time.

I did, at least, manage an Advent calendar for Ingrid. Nothing fancy, since I didn’t start planning in time – just a 24-piece puzzle in 24 red envelopes.

We had our work Christmas dinner yesterday, at a nice old manor house, with everyone’s partners and everything. It was interesting (but not exactly surprising) to see that the colleagues who I enjoy talking to, also had partners I enjoyed talking to, and the colleagues I’d never felt a connection with had partners I couldn’t connect to either.

I think we (Eric and I) managed to prove to everyone that we are incurably odd, since we decided to walk home from the party, even though it’s about a half-hour walk and it was raining a bit. But after 3 hours of sitting and stuffing ourselves we really felt a need for some fresh air and exercise. The Swedish smorgasbord-style Christmas dinners almost seem to be designed to make everyone eat too much.

Ingrid was at home watching Teletubbies with my mum. Her last time with a babysitter was almost a year ago, and we were a bit unsure about how it would go. In the end it went as smoothly as anyone could wish. She didn’t even ask for us, not even when it was time to go to bed. I warned her in advance that grandma would come for a visit and mummy would go out and Ingrid would stay at home. The first time, a few days before, she didn’t like the idea much at all: big teary eyes and trembling lower lip. The second time, the day before, she looked a bit cross and said she wanted to come with me. The closer we got, the less she cared, and by the time I was about to leave she didn’t even care enough to come to the window to wave me good-bye. So to all those who claim that children need to be left early on with babysitters in order to train them, and that all this co-sleeping and babywearing and liberal cuddling will cause trouble later, I just say “hah!”.

We celebrated Ingrid’s birthday this Sunday. Unfortunately she was slightly off-colour and the large crowd (9 guests) was a bit too much for her. But she really enjoyed opening her presents, and playing with her two cousins, whom she doesn’t meet very often. She liked her cards, too, especially since several of them had photos of herself on them.

(Ingrid’s quite fascinated with photos: every time I try to take a photo of her she runs to me and wants to look at it on the camera screen. Often she does this before I’ve even had time to take the picture, which makes it quite hard to get any photos at all…) I didn’t have the time to take any photos of the birthday party myself, so I’m hoping the guests will send me theirs. Hint, hint…

We had two yellow candles for her, and spoke about how she’s now two years old. I don’t think she understands what a year is, but she understood that the number two has something to do with her now. Whenever we run across a “two” somewhere in a story or a book, she pauses, and very proudly tells me “kaks aastat!”

We had our Christmas lunch at work today. Here’s what the rest of the team ate:

It’s interesting. After 15 years as a vegetarian I couldn’t even see that pig as food. It didn’t look edible or smell edible at all. Not disgusting either, just not food.

It’s strange. You take Christmas pudding, which on its own is overwhelmingly sticky-sweet. And you take brandy cream, which on its own is overwhelmingly sticky-sweet. And you put the two together, and the result actually tastes quite good. How did that happen?

This is, I think, our most low-key Christmas ever. We have the important ingredients: a tree, masses of gingerbread cookies, and julmust. But celebrations have been small and spread out. Most years we’ve celebrated either with my mother (who also lived in England for about 5 years) or Eric’s family in Stockholm. This year my mother is back in Sweden, and we thought Ingrid was a bit too young for long-distance travel, so we’re on our own and hadn’t planned anything particular for Christmas at all. Not even a Christmas dinner: a large part of our evenings is occupied by getting Ingrid ready for the night, which makes it hard to fit in any major dinner preparations. My father visited us a week before Christmas, so with careful organising we managed to have a Christmas-style dinner then (roast veg, a veggie loaf and homemade cranberry sauce – yum). I enjoyed cooking it – the first time in about 2 months that I cooked a proper meal – but that required a fair amount of planning, and right now I’d rather relax than undertake a project like that.

For Christmas Eve we were invited by a couple of friends to a Glöggfest in Brockenhurst outside of Southampton. Brockenhurst is 2 hours by train from London, which made it by far our longest trip yet with Ingrid. We’ve only been to Central London a couple of times. The trip there went well – she slept well in the sling, and ate well, even though she seemed to be quite distracted by the landscape rushing past.

The moment we set foot inside our friends’ house, Ingrid started screaming. Not crying, but screaming as if she was in terrible distress. She really, REALLY, didn’t want to be there. Since she got upset so immediately after we entered, we guessed it must have been the smell of incense in the house. And the only way to calm her was to take her outside… so Eric spent the first hour and a half standing outside in the front garden, with Ingrid asleep in the sling.

When Ingrid had woken and eaten, and the incense smoke had dispersed, she was content and social for half an hour, even smiling at the other guests! But then something went wrong again, and the screaming came back. This time she agreed to almost calm down in a quiet room far from everybody else, but even then she wasn’t happy. So we gave up and headed home pretty soon. She calmed down after only 10 minutes outside, and was perfectly happy on the train home. She was probably simply overwhelmed by the new sights and sounds and smells.

Conclusion: Ingrid doesn’t mind travelling, but is no more fond of noisy crowds than I am.

But the best part of this Christmas holiday has been having Eric at home for almost two weeks. I am so glad to not be alone all day, and immensely relieved to have someone to share the work of taking care of Ingrid. Eric’s been taking care of Ingrid’s long midday nap, which has given my back (and my patience) a very welcome break. Even though I’m not working, I get a Christmas vacation! I feel rested, and actually enjoy my time with Ingrid now.

This is what I was met by when I got home after two days’ absence: a huge, fragrant, twinkling Christmas tree. (It’s so huge that I can’t fit it all into one photo without going so far that the flash on my camera doesn’t light it up any more.)

The tree almost manages to look huge even in our apartment, even though the ceiling here is quite high. The crossbeams are at least 3m from the floor, and the ridge is about another 2m above that. The tree must be a good 4 metres high, and large enough that it doesn’t really stand up on its own and rests against one of the beams. I wonder how Eric got it home, or in through the door! (“On the bike,” he says.) Our string of Christmas lights looks almost puny on that tree. (We haven’t got the rest of the decorations up yet.)

The lights were our only Christmas decorations in our previous apartment, where the living room wasn’t really large enough for a proper tree. So we hung them on our fig.

We’ve had some trouble finding the right sort of trees here in London – they mostly sell firs of various sorts, whereas the traditional tree in Estonia and Sweden is a spruce (picea abies). I’ve got to admit that firs generally look lusher and greener; spruces tend to be thinner and sparser. And spruce needles are a lot sharper – although that only matters initially when you’re hanging up the decorations. However, some firs hardly have any smell at all – we happened to buy one of those the year before last (or maybe it was last year). The smell is an important part of a Christmas tree, and this year’s tree smells wonderful.

1. Invite friends to the kitchen.
2. Provide tools, ingredients and instructions.
3. Add glögg as needed, and stir vigourously.

We had our traditional (if 4 years can be called a tradition) Swedish “julstök” (Christmas bake) yesterday: cooking and baking in the company of friends. We now have enough gingerbread cookies, lussebullar (saffron buns), knäck (toffee), chocolate sweets and fudge to last us for a month at least.

All of it’s rather experimental, really. For the knäck, for example, we tried using treacle instead of golden syrup this year, and it didn’t work as well as expected… but the same treacle was good for gingerbread dough. This year’s gingerbread cookies came out better than ever, pleasantly spicy and dark.

Gingerbread cookies are my favourites, really, both to make and to eat. It’s fun to try and fit as many as possible onto the rolled-out dough, to waste as little as possible. And they taste good!

Fewer people came to join us than last year, and one large family had to decline at the last moment, so we’ve got a whole lot of glögg left over… well, that’ll save us the bother of carrying it home next year!

This year’s Christmas preparations in our household have now been kicked off through the purchase of 9 bottles of glögg and 6 bottles of julmust, both absolutely essential for a true Swedish Christmas experience. What would Swedish expats do without IKEA? (Invite lots of visitors from Sweden in December, I guess… although nowadays you can probably buy your julmust online.)

Christmas has three essential components: the tree, the sweets and the drinks (which also happen to be sweet, coincidentally). Presents are pleasant but not essential. Christmas food, other than the sweets, is also optional.

The drinks part is now sorted for this year. The sweets will be fixed this weekend (Saturday). This only leaves the tree.

I love julmust. If the glögg bottles weren’t so infernally heavy, I’d have bought three times as much julmust. I think a follow-up / refill trip might be needed in a few weeks’ time.

Superficially, julmust might look like Coke, but it’s really a very different thing. I am not particularly fond of Coke – I may drink one maybe once or twice a year – mostly because Coke is disgustingly, cloyingly sweet. I don’t understand how they can dissolve that much sugar in water. It somehow manages to taste sweeter than sugar water. Julmust is sweet, too, but it has a spicy rich flavour. It reminds of dark beer (think Guinness) which is not surprising given that it contains malt and hops. It tastes very nice mixed with beer, about half and half.

According to reliable sources Swedes drink 60,000,000 litres of must each year, of which 45,000,000 in December. That’s about 5 litres for every Swede regardless of age. (Add about 4 or 5 million litres of glögg, too.) Apparently Sweden is one of the few countries where sales of Coke actually decline in December, as julmust displaces Coke from the top spot. The rest is drunk at Easter, for some reason, and during the rest of the year you can hardly find must in stores. Definitely not outside Sweden. That’s part of its charm – it wouldn’t be as special if I drank it every week.