A Jolly Time

Christmas was an international affair this year. Linnea has a Swedish friend, Mikaela Ronström, in a drawing class. This was her first semester away from Stockholm and she had no place to go for Christmas. So, like the spider to the fly, we invited her into our Swedish-Norwegian-American web.
Marianne, my sister, also came to visit from Whittier, Calif. So did Sharon, who is from Taiwan. When my cousin Alan showed up Sunday night with his Russian wife, I think we had a quorum for passing sanctions against North Korea.
The photo above shows Nils, Anders and Mikaela with Santa. As near as I can tell, Kirsti has some secret deal with this guy. Every Christmas Eve, he simply walks in the door unannounced, shaking his bells.
Personally, I find old guys who "see you when you're sleeping," and who "know when you're awake" to be creepy, especially when they just walk in like that. But the kids like him.

Jul Wars

It happens every year at this time at our house. Perhaps it happens in every house with mixed cultures. We battle over how to decorate the tree.

Kirsti is Swedish. I'm Norwegian. OK, that's not like, say, Israeli and Arab, but if you've been in Scandinavia, you'll know there is a difference (it may require a microscope to see it, but we can be small people, in many ways).

But the differences are especially important at Christmas. Scandinavians decorate their Christmas trees with their national flags. Early in our marriage, we competed to see which nation's flags would be highest on the tree. No-brainer there, I was taller. But often I would come home from work or wake up in the morning (I always sleep longer than Kirsti) to find there had been a coup atop the branches.

After several trips to the "old countries" and to IKEA, we ended up with lots and lots of Christmas tree flags from both countries. Somehow, though, the Swedish ones always seemed to be bigger.

This year, however, we've solved the problem. We have one Swedish tree, in the upstairs living room. Please note how large the flags are at the top. (To be fair, we did buy some big flags in Norway a few years back, but they tend to knock the tree over.)

And we have one Norwegian tree in the upstairs family room.

Does this end the war?

Well, it does for me, so long as the NORWEGIAN tree is the one with all the presents beneath it!