Worse than Christmas Day

I am sure I have told you before about the fairly local expression "worse than Christmas Day". In Sweden, as I described in previous posts, all that is good with Christmas (and therefore also much of what is good with winter) is done on Christmas Eve. So when you wake up on Christmas Day, you realise that you have nothing Christmas-y to look forward to, no family gathering, no gifts, no excuse for eating loads of candy/food, and it is so dark. Your Christmas tree is sitting there as a definition of anti-climax, its carpet now devoid of Christmas gifts. It looks lonely, and you know that it has really served its purpose, no more hope for it. There are few things that over night lose so dramatically in value, as Christmas trees. On Christmas Eve desperate people can easily pay 50 euro for a tree, just to save the holiday calmness of the family. But on Christmas Day, no-one would offer even a cent for a cut down spruce tree. The tree is now no more than garbage, unwanted bulk, and you start thinking of how to get rid of it the easiest way. Piles of browned trees start piling up, needles hanging loose. It is a quite sad view.

However, yesterday, Christmas Day was a perfectly brilliant day. The skies were blue, the air was high, the sun was shining, and a lovely crisp air repetitively filled my lungs on the nice 1 ½ h walk I lured my mom out on. Then we sat down in front of the fireplace, and had a continued nice day; ate more chocolates, knitted, watched TV, played with the cats, played cards, and just relaxed in general. This upcoming year "worse than Christmas Day" will mean close to nothing, because it will be far to easy to be worse than the absolutely lovely day I had yesterday.