December. The darkness has descended. Daylight by sunrise and sunset is under 5 1/2 hours now, but we are in the final stretch to the winter equinox—just 12 days to the shortest day of the year. I kind of feel tired all the time. That’s the only downside I can think of that’s possibly due to the darkness. While we were driving in the car from school one day this week, Iita said to me that she thinks she’s more irritable. She’s sure it’s the darkness. She apologized for being grumpy lately. Sweetheart.
In this darker world we’re now in, December is still a month of great importance here.
On December 6th, the kids and I celebrated our first Finnish Independence Day while in Finland. It’s a fairly solemn affair compared to the 4th of July. It might have something to do with the history of the young country and how its sacrifices and defenses for independence, along with its scars, are still only a generation removed. It could be that Finns in general are less expressive of their feelings too; less fireworky. It’s a day of remembrance and deep appreciation probably as much or more than one of celebration.
Finnish Independence Day lunch at Mimmu's dad's place
Jyväskylä has put on its lights for the Christmas holiday—Joulu in Finnish. The name for December is Joulukuu— “Christmas month.” An entire month named after a holiday seems a pretty big deal as months go.
Downtown Jyväskylä dressed up for Christmas
We’ve adapted much of Finnish Christmas culture at home in Duluth for the entirety of our kids’ lives before we’ve ever celebrated it here, so things don’t actually feel that new in that regard. We started with Hissuhiiri—Hissu the Mouse. We don’t know how he knew we were in Duluth to begin with all those years ago. We’ve wondered if he had ESP or a homing device for Finnish kids or just followed his instincts and jumped on a ship in Kotka, made his way through world ports and jumped upon various transfer ships until he found one that landed in Duluth when Taavi was 2 years old. We think Hissu must’ve sensed a little Finnish boy was in need of someone or thing to instill Finnish Christmas in his heart, because when we hung the felt-pocketed advent calendar on our pantry door in the kitchen in hopes of a Finnish mouse bearing small gifts for children, things started magically appearing in the pockets for each day of December. Hissu has been there every December 1-24 like clockwork ever since. It’s amazing.
After we’d check what Hissu brought each morning, we’d log onto the YLE Areena app and stream Joulukalenteri—Christmas Calendar—and sit around the TV for 10 minutes after breakfast, getting sucked into a month-long Christmas story in 24 brief installments, right up to Christmas Eve morning. It's a show that changes every year, produced by YLE, Finland's national TV broadcaster. It's a dramatic/comedic kid's Christmas story that runs in about 10-minute episodes through each December, that is usually to do with elves, Santa Claus, and some wrinkle in Christmas running as it should. It's quite a great thing.
I’m speaking in the past tense, because this Christmas is different actually being in Finland. We didn’t really expect Hissu at his age to travel trans-Atlantic in Covid era on such short notice. We hardly had enough notice ourselves, so Hissu gets December 2020 off.
Luckily, Pekka Tonttu—Pekka the Elf—caught wind of Hissu’s dilemma and stepped in to help out this year. Starting December 1, stuff began appearing in socks the kids have hung near our Christmas tree, and they keep coming, every single morning. It’s an amazing phenomenon how Finnish Christmas magic works. The kids probably don’t quite believe it anymore, but when a Pekka delivers practical things every day like socks, pencils and erasers, hair ties, shoe laces, hockey stick tape, Vaseline, floss, and some days the odd piece of candy or sucker to go with the useful items, there’s not much reason to test the reality of Pekka’s late night antics. What 10 and 11 year old would risk loosing a month of loot for something as silly as challenging the adults in the house on the existence of an elf sneaking in and dropping that stuff in their socks for them, every night, for almost a full month? Who doesn’t love a pack of Menthos when they wake up in the morning?
Joulukalenteri has been a little different as well. The kids have different schedules each day for school. Watching it is a collective thing. We wouldn’t dare sneak off and watch it without everyone sitting down and giving it our full attention. Because of Hockey, Salibandy, and odd work schedules on the American work day being our late afternoon to late evening, we might eat dinner some nights disjointedly at different times, but everyone has to be locked and loaded together for Joulukalenteri. That’s the rule. The bummer is, it airs at 8:15 am, and Taavi’s school starts at 8:15 3 days a week. We can’t watch it on the app before it airs on Finnish TV for the first time each day, so our December morning ritual has turned Joulukalenteri into a pre-bedtime thing for this year, at least until Christmas break. It’s weird, but we’re dealing with it.
YLE's 2020 Joulukalenteri cast. Pirkka-Pekka Petelius on the far right is one of Finland's most famous, greatest funnymen.
Christmas here feels pretty nice. The radio stations have started playing more Christmas music, and 98.8 had actually turned into Jouluradio proper, though Iita and I agree, Radio Aalto’s mix of song choices is way better. There are shoppers downtown more than there were a month ago, though mask prevalence is way up; nearly universally. I’m guessing I might have noticed a sharper increase in the shopping downtown in non-Covid times too. It certainly feels less all about buying stuff here than December feels in America though. I honestly don’t know if that’s the Covid talking or Finland just isn’t as present crazy, but I sense it’s a bit of both. Either way, it’s nice.
It’s even trickled down to the kids’ attitudes. The two of them and I went driving around Christmas shopping the last two evenings after school, partially scoping stuff out for others and partially what they might like for presents. I’m struck that neither have long lists this year. We’re usually picking from a laundry list of stuff they’d like, numbering into the teens. This year, neither kid is asking for a whole lot, which makes me quite proud. Maybe it’s just “the Finland effect?” If it is, bring it on! We talked about whether or not they’d like to get alpine passes to Laajavuori, the little alpine hill 1km from the row house we move into December 31st. They thought it sounded cool but Taavi said maybe it’s too expensive because we’ll need the equipment too. Sweetheart.
It finally has dropped below freezing here for several days in a row and the forecast goes now as far as it reaches without a forecasted temp above freezing. Laajavuori started up their snow guns yesterday. Taavi and I had a little time before picking Iita up from hockey practice, so I took him up to Laajavuori to see the snow guns and maybe grow some enthusiasm for the ski idea. It was, as chances are that it would be, dark. You could see the amber glow of the lights off the snowmaking cloud forming above the ski area, from a distance as we drove towards it. Taavi couldn’t believe that’s what it was. He said it looked like a fire. We pulled up and saw a small group using the t-bar lift on the bottom 1/4 of the hill with snow guns belching out snow all over. Taavi was sold. That looked like something he wanted to do this winter. We left to pick up Iita with visions of a gravity-fed-fun winter dancing in our heads. Maybe Christmas can deliver on those visions?
We’re still dreaming of a white Christmas. That would certainly make Joulukuu seem a lot more Joulu-y. Iita is the most Jouluhullu—Christmas crazy—and she has celebrated every naturally-fallen snowflake to date. It hasn’t seemed to help though. We are getting desperate. We move into a row house across from Laajavuori the week after Christmas. If we don’t get winter before then, I’m hoping that we will be the ones to knock the weather trends off its current axis with our move. Something has to do it. Nothing else has worked. Maybe I’ll take it up with Hissuhiiri? I just don’t know how to reach him as his only form of communication is dropping things into the pockets of our felt advent calendar tucked away in a box somewhere in our basement. That’s not likely to work. Maybe we can pass a note to Pekka? Anniina Valtonen hasn’t been able to do anything yet either. Maybe I should send her some chocolates…or maybe she likes cash?