My White Christmas
The Swedes Celebrate Their Way, and I’m All In (I Guess)
I’m not writing what I want to write. That’s because my coterie of friends/editorial advisers have observed that I’ve been super depressing of late, which is a fair point. But it’s the holidays, so I’m going for good cheer despite the state of the world.
One thing about being an immigrant is that you have to let go of what you thought you were and how you thought life would be. As part of this surrender, you must cheerfully participate in the local rituals. So I almost always bake some kind of strawberry tart around Sweden’s National Day in early June. I do the Frog Dance at Midsommar and eat crayfish in August and stand around the bonfire on Valborg. And at Christmas, I watch these unending fucking concerts.
It’s almost New Year’s Eve now. That means that very soon, my husband will steer me, muttering and balking, over to the couch. “It begins,” I will text my children and they will know exactly what’s happening to me. He will turn on the TV to the state channel and an image will appear. It’s a stage at Skansen, the open-air museum and zoo on Stockholm’s island of Djurgården. For the hour ending at the stroke of midnight, they’ll put on a concert there and my intelligent, cynical husband will watch, eyes rounded in childlike wonder.
This concert is the whitest thing you’ll ever see. Trust me.
I’m not much of a concert person, let alone a televised concert person, but I thought it couldn’t possibly be worse than the Vienna Boys Choir’s performance of the Holy Mass at the Vienna Hofmusikkapelle that he makes me watch every year. Or my annual enforced viewing of the Dutch composer and violinist Andre Rieu’s Christmas Day extravaganza. But no.
The first time I watched Skansen’s New Year’s Eve concert, I assumed it would be painless. I was new to Sweden and found everything amazing. I was in love! The concert would be another layer of experience to add to my canvas. And while I was not a televised concert person, how bad could it be? After all, Swedes are very good at most things and this was the land of ABBA! And they know from music — Sweden ranks No. 3 globally in music exports, behind only the U.S. and the U.K.
Then the music began. Now, bear in mind, this concert is meant to be a show-stopping number, no holds barred. This is the big night, when you break out the sequins and the fog machine! This is when you give it all you’ve got.
And there now appeared before my wondering eyes the stage, suddenly overrun with white people, many of them elderly. They wore the usual Swedish puffer vests on top of whatever, as if they were swinging by the gas station. Despite the nondescript attire, the vibe was – how can I describe it? – overeager. They were up there, smiling and swaying enthusiastically. Still, as a group, they were missing the beat by more than a mile and because of this, they appeared to be, more than anything else, convulsing. One might think of the St. Vitus Dance or of Sydenham’s chorea. One might wish not to think at all, not ever again. As the music swelled to a crescendo, the oldsters began to move in earnest. I gasped.
“Is that … is that dancing?” I asked my husband.
He nodded, lost in enchantment.
I covered my mouth. It was so white. I was so ashamed. My adopted people are wonderful, but I now had to confront an ugly new reality. I feared that they cannot dance. And I wasn’t sure they were burning it down with the showmanship, either.
We watched until it was over. The clock struck midnight and my husband was glowing. “The things we do to save our marriages,” as a friend of mine put it when I told her the whole ugly tale the next day. She had recently accompanied her marine biologist husband on some sort of boat tour of their local wetlands or marshes or swamps or something, out in the pissing rain and cold, looking at weeds in the mud. Her husband had been alight with joy. He’s now planning another jaunt for them – something involving bivalves, a special surprise! – and she is living in fear.
I think it is right that I watch the concert. After all, it’s not like I haven’t made my husband submit himself to similar cultural mysteries when we lived in the U.S. We went to the Fourth of July fireworks every year, along with our whole Connecticut town, and every year I prodded him to get up off the picnic blanket and stand for the national anthem. He looked bewildered, but he did it. And that’s what I’ll do, too.
One thing they always do at the Skansen concert, at least for the time that I’ve been here, is read the Swedish translation of the Tennyson poem, “Ring Out, Wild Bells,” or “Nyårsklockan.” So before I am steered toward my dark, dorky fate on that couch, I am offering this poem to you in its original English, to celebrate the year that was and to steel our spines for the year that will be:
Ring Out, Wild Bells
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light; The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true. Ring out the grief that saps the mind, For those that here we see no more, Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind. Ring out a slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws. Ring out the want, the care the sin, The faithless coldness of the times; Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, But ring the fuller minstrel in. Ring out false pride in place and blood, The civic slander and the spite; Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring in the common love of good. Ring out old shapes of foul disease, Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace. Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be.
– Alfred Lord Tennyson
Looks as if you want to adjust, but have a looooong way to go.
Maybe you could learn something from those oh so "white" elderly Swedish dancers whom apparently don't give a crap how they look.
I look forward to your writing from the depths of those long sunless days.
Better buy those therapy lights now.
And don't forget to get your vitamin D levels checked. I'm serious: there's an epidemic of hypovitaminosis D even in light skinned persons at lower latitudes. My Jamaican sister in law developed an osteoporotic stress fracture of her femur during late pregnancy and she only lived at 47° north in. Canada. . Her D level was severely low so watch for it.
Nonetheless, good luck.
As I have always said, "Life, even love, is severely conditional!". 😬