Everyday Stranger

The Darkness and The Light

Today is a holiday here in Sweden. It's called "Lucia Day", and is the day of the year when it is the darkest (symbolically that is, as the real day with the shortest amount of daylight is December 23), the day when winter smacks you across the face to remind you that in the north, you should never take the daylight for granted. There is no daylight at all in the north of Sweden today, and just a few hours of it here in Stockholm.

The day is celebrated by a short processional led by a young woman wearing candles on her head, surrounded by a chorus of others holding candles, and they sing traditional songs in a way of marking the darkness, and noting how now we will start getting a few minutes more of daylight each day. It's a way to mark the darkness, but also a celebration that light is coming back. It's the direct contrast to Midsummer, which is celebrated with wild drunken orgy-like abandon in the middle of July, the day in which the sun doesn't set really.

I was Lucia once in a Lucia parade, dressed in a white gown with a red sash, a crown of candles in my hair and a wreath of flowers in my hand. It was my first December in Sweden then, and I just stood there and smiled while the others sang the songs, since they were in Swedish and I didn't understand it all then. The chorus are men and women dressed in white robes and red sashes, and the men wear a tall white triangular hat that looks uncomfortably like the attire of the KKK, but it has nothing to do with that whatsoever (I am relieved to say).

And it is very cold, very gray outside today, although a bit lighter in appearance since there is a light snowfall. I have had a fire going all morning since I couldn't sleep, and today will be spent cleaning, applying for jobs, and picking up the last few Christmas presents that I need to buy.

On Lucia day you are supposed to eat a special type of baked bun, called a Luciabulle. And on the four Sundays before Christmas, we light advent lights. One candle is lit and allowed to burn just a bit on the first Sunday. The second Sunday, the first candle and a second candle are lit and allowed to burn just a bit, and so on.

This year there are no Luciabulle in the house. There is no advent taper lit and ready to go, it is still in the box it was hastily stuffed in at the end of last year, getting dusty in the attic. There are no decorations, no lights, no sign at all that it is the holiday season here. Neither I nor Partner Unit feel the need to celebrate this year, nor do we see the need to drag out all the decorations when it is just an empty celebration.

All this might sound pretty down, but in fact right now I feel ok (perhaps it's all that curry I have been eating). I am still endlessly sending off CVs. I still have absolutely no idea what is going to happen with my life, my career, my location, or my relationships. But right now I'm ok. I just sit, write, look out the study window at the falling snow, and I don't mind that it's the darkest day of the year.

Because at the end of the darkest day of the year comes the light. The light which will, despite the cold, start to pervade the little corners and areas of each little house and garden. Proof that after the longest night, the sun will come back and illuminate our lives.

And I have to hope that the light will find me, too.
-H.