Glædelig Jul

The darkest day of the year is behind us, and it's a good time to revive the blog after our hiatus. It has been nice to see that people have been checking in. Don't take this the wrong way, but it reminded me of operant conditioning (the only thing I recall from the Psychology 101 course I took at Bucknell) to see that the number of "hits" remained similar, despite the lack of a "reward" in the form of a new update. Anyway - that unintentional experiment is over and I appreciate that everyone cares enough to check up on us once in a while.

Today is Lille Juleaften, or Christmas Eve Eve. Since presents are traditionally opened on Christmas Eve, there are lots of children (and adults?) at the height of anticipation. Shopping has been crazy and since everything shuts down for the 24, 25, and 26th we were out yesterday stocking up for our meals so we don't go hungry. Grocery stores and restaurants are closed, so there's a risk of going hungry if we're not prepared. We did however see a deli today that will be open all three days, so it's not as dire as we imagined. In any case, everyone was out stocking up. Since shops are all in walking distance and driving and parking to go grocery shopping is not practical, we normally shop every day or two for the next day's meals. This week we carried a large load home and it should hold us for a while. The biggest scene was at the butcher shop where I took my number and discovered there were 34 people ahead of me. Normally, there are one or two people there at any one time, so this was definitely the Christmas rush. This was one day I wouldn't be bringing home the bacon.

Being the last Sunday in Advent, we went to our first full Danish church service this morning. It was at the Kastellet church and the service included a baptism. There were six hymns, three of which had eight or nine verses which allowed me to figure out the tunes by the end. The hymnbooks lack music notation, so you have to recognize the tune for each hymn by name. The service was very traditional and outside of the hymns, not very participatory. Our Danish is still not good enough to catch everything, but it was worth a try.

Last week our choir held it's Christmas concert. We both sang, and there was a full house in the church. The encore piece was "When You Wish Upon a Star" which is associated with Christmas here because for years the only time Disney cartoons were played on television was Christmas morning. Another highlight for me was "Glæde Jul," the Danish carol to the tune of "Silent Night" which was arranged by our director. As with last year we had Christmas dinner with the choir and lasted to around midnight, though the party continued to 5AM. We just don't have that stamina.

We're looking forward to "en dejlig jul" - a Merry Christmas - and we wish everyone the same.