The season of waiting

"Advent", I'm told, originally meant "the season of waiting". From a religious standpoint, it denotes the four Sundays leading up to Christmas. It's a major secular celebration in Sweden, probably due to a desperate need for some light in the darkness. The beginning of winter has a tendency to be extremely sunless in Sweden: whether due to the overcast skies or the four hour days, or some combination of the two, it's equally dreaded by all. Trips to e.g. southern Spain are usually employed to stave of depression, but for those left at home, the adventsljusstake will have to do before Yuletide rescues them from the gloom:


To my very great surprise, I will actually end up celebrating an almost full-blown Advent this year. Not only did my church send me an adventskalender in the mail (although in all honesty, it's a little booklet of prayers, not a proper calendar), they also thoughtfully arranged to have a special Advent service this Sunday morning, complete with lighting the first candle! Granted, they've turned the traditionally box-shaped candle holder into a wreath, which is filled with spruce branches instead of moss, but they're on the right track. And when the organist played the first couple of notes of the old Swedish hymn "Bered en väg för herran", I couldn't suppress a peal of delighted laughter. The words were all wrong in the English hymnal, of course, but it did send me right back to third grade music lessons, and I gave it my tone-deaf all.

I'll also have the oppurtunity to celebrate Lucia in a few weeks. Another quaint Swedish custom - this saint's day is only celebrated in Scandinavia and few other places - that has little to do with religion these days. One of the few other full-blooded Swedes in town (there were three at least count) is hosting a Lucia get-together at her house. She did warn me about all the other attendees being thirty-something moms and their kids, but I'll be damned if that keeps me from glögg (genuine product of IKEA!) and lussekatter.

From an American perspective, the holiday season has officially started. Tasteless Christmas decorations are going up everywhere, endless jingle-bells are heard in the stores, and many people have already finished their Christmas shopping. To top it off, winter finally gave it a good go:


Apparently King Frost, whose bark has so far been worse than his bite, decided that even all this talk of global warming isn't going to delay things any more. Temperatures promptly descended to 0 Fahrenheit or so, and it's been snowing off and on lately. It doesn't seem to amount to more than a few inches at a time, but these things do add up eventually. Or blow up, rather: the wind scours the ground of snow in some places, and piles it in foot-deep drifts elsewhere. Makes for tricky biking, I can tell you that much. Sometimes it's like being up on kalfjället (above the Swedish treeline) - the wind has unhindered access to you, and while the snow isn't coming from the sky, it sure is howling horizontally straight into your face. I can see now that I'm going to be in great cardio shape by the time Spring rolls around. But every so often the wind stops, and campus turns out to be quite lovely in winter:






Of course, for Americans the holidays are kicked off by Thanksgiving, not some odd candle-lighting ceremonies. As far as I can tell, it's the American equivalent of Swedish Christmas: no real religious connection, enough food to kill a grown man, a time to see your relatives, and general conviviality in the winter darkness. This year I had the good luck and supreme pleasure of being invited to the Wards for Thanksgiving dinner. I'll be doing a rotation in Naomi's (the woman with the Tim-Tams, remember?) lab after Christmas, and she graciously invited some current and future students (me and the Russian girls) that didn't really have anyone to celebrate with. And woah Nelly, was it a nice evening! The beer was both good and plentiful, the company interesting and funny, and the food... Oh dear. As it turns out, Naomi's husband Bryce was a professional cook some years ago. This left him with an impressive (and scary!) collection of knives, a penchant for large kitchens and what can only be described as a genius for cooking. I make a point of preparing good food myself, but I couldn't have pulled that meal off under gunpoint. Just the fact that the turkey stuffing was based on four sticks of butter, ten cloves of garlic, one bottle of Merlot and a bunch of green chili peppers speaks volumes. I don't think I've eaten quite so well (or quite so much!) in months and months. I gladly work for food, and that meal alone would've paid for my services for several weeks. As I biked home in the blistering cold, pleasantly drunk, I decided that I could easily get used to this whole Thanksgiving thing. And indeed, good times were had by all:


As for the climbing season, it's pretty much over. Most of my partners labor under the misconception that you can't climb when it's freezing and snowy outside - laughably wrong, of course - and combined with yet another annoying injury (three blown-out ligaments and counting), it has me thinking about taking up snowboarding. Indeed, the last good day of the year I wasn't even going upwards:


In closing, and getting back to the theme of waiting, the semester is drawing to an end. My final exam in biochemistry is on December 14th, and if I'm not mistaken this upcoming week is the last one of classes. I'll keep fighting the good fight in the lab up through the 20th, but after that it's "Home, sweet home". I'm taking the slow plane back to Sweden (18 hours of traveling - yuck!) and some well-deserved rest. I plan to spend lots of time alternating between bed, couch, dinner table, sauna and pub. Each has its place during a visit to the Old Country, but with it being Christmas and all, I intend to favor the less stressful activities (eating and sleeping) over the more laborious ones (seeing old friends always includes getting stinking drunk). Almost there - the sound of the carols seem to drift just beyond the edge of hearing: "Nu tändas tusen juleljus/på jordens mörka rund/och tusen, tusen stråla ock/på himlens djupblå grund"...