Halló halló!
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We are about a week into the Advent here in Iceland, that time of year that leads up to Christmas, and that officially begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas Eve, which is when we Icelanders have our main celebration.
The Advent is a very special time in our little land. For most of us, the Yule and its preparation kindle a little light in the heart, providing a much-needed respite from the winter darkness that, by December, has settled over everything. We get up in the dark, go to work in the dark, and come home in the dark. It is the time of year when "up at the crack of dawn" means you have overslept, far too late.
The Advent gives us permission to start lighting things up. We put Advent lights on our windowsills, string lights on our trees and bushes, candles everywhere. The delicious smell of cookies baking, laufabraud frying, or hangikjöt cooking bring back happy memories of childhood. Ég er mikid jólabarn, Icelanders will proclaim during the Advent—literally "I am very much a Christmas child"—and that phrase perfectly describes the way they embrace the season: with the wonder and excitement of a child. Music is all around, friends gather, restaurants are filled with people partaking of festive Yuletide offerings, authors are out and about reading from their new works. Everything pulsates with a vibrant, happy energy. There is even a word for the gleeful excitement one feels when waiting for Christmas: jólaskap, literally "Christmas mood".
Deep in the collective psyche of the Icelandic people, shaped by living for centuries in a harsh, unforgiving climate, there is an awareness that, at this darkest time of year, the winter solstice is imminent, marking a gradual return to the light and those endlessly luminous days of summer. Hope quickens: we are almost there. In the meantime, let us immerse ourselves in the rituals and traditions of our community, the stories and beliefs and traditions that give us so much comfort, such a sense of belonging. Those things that make us a tribe.
For Icelanders who live abroad, homesickness stings most at Christmas. They return for the holidays if they can, and if they cannot they ask relatives to send them some of those traditional foods, the ones that make Christmas in Iceland. In faraway lands they cook their hangikjöt (smoked lamb), open their cans of ORA peas (from an Icelandic cannery), pour their jólaöl (Christmas ale), and sigh with a sense of diluted delight. The full, consummate experience of the Icelandic jól eludes them, because it cannot be had unless you are right there, in Iceland, with the darkness and the weather and the family and the songs and the radio, and all the rest.
Do you celebrate Christmas? If yes, what traditions make the season for you?
The above post was excerpted from my Little Book of the Icelanders at Christmas. It’s available in hard cover (ships from Iceland), in paperback from your nearest Amazon marketplace, as an ebook from most online ebook retailers, and as an audiobook from Audible.
If you would like to hear me read the above post, click on the audio below (for paid subscribers only):
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