The day before Christmas eve. Tomorrow is the day. In Sweden we have the tradition of counting down to Christmas eve, which is the day that we celebrate, by counting towards the dipping day. It sounds totally absurd in English and honestly in my mind kinda kinky. But it has to do with both with historically practical reasons and old hedonistic traditions, the point is though that your dipping bread in a bouillon and eat it. And here endeth the history lesson.
The thing is that I'm a total x-mas sucker. I love it. But it's not the actual x-mas days that I love. They are nice enough but usually never as great as you feel they should be and they also mark the ending of all the nice things. Don't get me wrong. I like them. Especially this year will be nice and relaxed with my parents and my brother. And often of course it means some days of from work which is nice. But what I really love is the weeks up to x-mas, basically all of December. I love the lights in the city and all the preparations. I love the smell of all the candles at home and putting up the stars in the window. I love figuring out x-mas gifts for my loved ones (even though sometimes it's just a big frustration). I love the snow outside, which I'm used to for at least some parts of December, and the way it helps lighting everything up in these dark times. I love the stupid songs, the lucia celebration, the cookies and of course the glögg. I love taking up the decorations and putting them around the house. I love wrapping the gifts and making stupid rhymes for them. I don't know why I like all this stuff I just do.
And the peak of all of this is waking up on the morning of Christmas eve. I really love that. There's something in the air that morning. Of course as a kid I was so excited about the gifts in the afternoon and just waited all day for it. I used to wake up really early, since I couldn't sleep, and take my duvet and a book (usually something by Astrid LIndgren) and go in to the living room. There I saw the Christmas tree for the first time, my parents always brought it in and decorated it late the night before. I plugged in the lights and then I crawled in sort of behind it so I could sit on the floor with the radiator under the window towards my back, all wrapped in to my duvet and there I would sit, reading my book and smelling the tree until the rest of the family woke up. That moment is x-mas for me more than anything, and also the reason to why I love x-mas trees.
Tomorrow I will wake up to x-mas eve at my parents place. There will be a tree and some nice times. I will probably sleep the longest though so no books and duvets under the tree. And then I will go back home and in the end of the week I will gladly put all the x-mas stuff away and I will be so happy over having the apartment clean of all the stuff. Because I do love Christmas but I don't dwell in it. Enough is enough and there will always be another one next year.
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