Welcome to my new blog site. The old posts have been transferred here, so you can browse back over time as well.
The Fun of Learning
Why should I learn new things at the age of 68? Let me list the reasons:
- It’s fun.
- It’s challenging.
- It’s rewarding.
- It’s useful.
and then explain what I mean.
At the moment, my main learning opportunity is learning new languages. For many years I have been brushing up my knowledge of French. Growing up in an English-speaking part of Canada, French was an obligatory language everyone had to learn. I enjoyed learning French, starting in Grade 8 and continued learning it all the way through high school. I may not have been great at writing or speaking French, but I enjoyed the classes and got grades a bit above average. I continued learning French in university, studying it for two more years. At that point, I found I had reached my limits, partly because I was not particularly good at writing (not even in English), and so discontinued taking more French classes.
I never got to use French much as most of my traveling was done in English-speaking countries or, at least those who had to deal with tourists, spoke enough English for me to get by with English.
Back to university days. Because I had been thinking of becoming a librarian, it was recommended that one have more than just French as a foreign language. So in my second year at UBC, I started learning German. I found that learning the language was fine and even made some new friends in my German classes, girls my age with German-speaking parents. The German course I remember best was one about the history of German culture, particularly about art, music and architecture. The course was in English, but I learned a lot of history that I found interesting. At the time, I was a lover of classical music and I was able to put my favorite composers into a cultural time period and learn more of what was actually going on at the time. (History had always seemed to be a list of battles, wars, kings and queens to be memorized up to that time and absolutely not interesting.)
In my last year of university, I was needing one more course and decided that taking an introductory course in another language would be easy, give me good grades and be fun. So I chose Italian and enjoyed learning more about both the language and the culture. A one-year course doesn’t teach a lot, but I did get the good grades I wanted. Little did I know how all this language learning would pay off later.
The years flew by and I never used these three foreign languages much at all. Until 1980, when my husband and I made the decision to move to Norway. Now all my efforts at learning new languages in the past gave me great benefits when I had to start learning a fourth foreign language. On our arrival in Norway, I was enrolled in a full-time weaving course, so I bought an English-Norwegian dictionary and worked on translating the textbooks in the evening. In the daytime there were other students to listen to and to talk to. Slowly I mastered another language other than English, certainly to a much better degree than I had ever mastered French, German or Italian.
After about two years, I could converse in and read Norwegian without getting exhausted. One is never finished learning a language as vocabulary is constantly changing, interests change and new areas of information arise. I continued to study in Norway, eventually had children and got a teaching job. My languages from university days lay idle in my brain, stored away in some deep dark recess.
Then my husband came across “Memrise” and I started relearning French vocabulary. It wasn’t very satisfactory as it was just a list of vocabulary to memorize and the words were not used in context. Then we discovered “Duolingo” and I was hooked. Since the 1st of January 2015 I have been active most days. Sometimes I do a little. Sometimes I do a lot. I still enjoy learning languages though the next step will be to use my knowledge more.
What makes it fun for me?
I enjoy learning new things. I like to read books where I can learn about what is happening in the world, or what new research is about. I like to watch television programs that try to teach me about something that I don’t know a lot about. Most of the time it is just putting two and two together, seeing if the sum is still four, or does it now make three or five. One learns new things by adding on to the knowledge one has already. I don’t necessarily want to learn about everything in the world, but in fields such as psychology and economics I enjoy finding new ways of looking at the world and putting old ideas together in new ways.
Why is it challenging?
Anything that one has to work with over time can pose a challenge, especially when new ideas can be hard to understand. I am currently working on learning three languages, French, Italian and Portuguese, which have very similar vocabulary and grammar. The challenge is not only understanding what I read, but also keeping the three languages separate. Part of the challenge of these three languages are the accents that are put on letters that I am used to in English. The accents give information about how a word is pronounced, but it can be confusing when è in Italian means “is” and the equivalent word in Portuguese is é.
What makes it rewarding for me?
We all enjoy accomplishing something that is challenging. I like the routine of working on lessons everyday. When I actually understand something that a few months ago I had problems with, then I feel like I am getting somewhere. Duolingo also builds into its program rewards such as how many days in a row I have worked on Duolingo (now 383 days in a row), earn extra rewards (called lingots) for accomplishing a series of lessons.
Why is it useful?
Learning new things creates new synapses in the brain. The more of these synapses we have, the easier the brain can deal with debilitating diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
I have also found that by learning Italian, words in English have more meaning. For example, in music we have scales, which comes from the Italian word “scala” meaning a ladder. The scales in English are a ladder up the notes on the piano.
Though at the moment, I am not traveling a lot, it can be useful to know other languages on the Internet and when reading novels. Just recently I read a book about a young family in Rome for a year. When the author used Italian phrases, I could understand what the phrases meant.
I will continue learning all of my life. It is fun, challenging, rewarding and useful.
Thinking and how our brains work
In 1968 I took an introductory psychology course and felt that I got an idea of what the subject was all about. I went on and studied other things and didn’t follow the developments happening there. Then in the last ten years, I found the field of psychology again and have had more time to read about what the new research has been telling us, including how we make decisions and how our brains work. I have enjoyed being able to read the authors listed below and have widened my understanding of how human beings work.
I am a retired teacher and first took pedagogy in the mid 1980s. In 2014, I took a short pedagogy course, designed for teaching mathematics, mostly at elementary or junior high levels. What I enjoyed most, was reading about everything that was new in pedagogy. I found out that quite a bit of research had been done in the previous ten years, and things had been discovered that were unknown when I took pedagogy in the 1980s. So this encouraged me to read more about psychology.
In the field of psychology, new methods of “seeing” how the brain works have been found. A lot of research has been done and I’m finding it interesting to read about the results of this research. I hope that new teachers will get the benefit of this new research, both in pedagogy and psychology, and be able to help children learn better. I also hope that the research will continue, both in psychology and pedagogy as there is still a lot more that can be learned. One main reflection I have is that the more science finds out about how humans work, the more complex the systems become.
Here is a list of some of the books that I have read and, in my opinion, the key ideas in each book.
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, 2011 – Over many years, Kahnemann and Amos Tversky looked at how people made decisions. They figured out that we think in two different ways. We often use heuristics or habit to make quick decisions that require little thinking effort. We use this type of thinking when driving a car and to do things automatically. This way of thinking can often lead to errors, but it is still useful and saves us a lot of effort. When learning new things, we think slowly, but this requires much more effort. For example, when learning to drive one has to think a lot about how to keep track of both what others are doing and what one is doing oneself with hands and feet. In addition these two men realized that we most often will try to avoid a loss, rather than make a gain. I recommend this book highly.
Rolf Dobelli, The Art of Thinking Clearly: Better Thinking, Better Decision, 2011 – Here is a list of the most common heuristics. Dobelli lists 99 of them and gives examples of how these biases mislead us. He also shows us how they are interrelated. This book is quick to read and a good reminder of how we don’t always think correctly. He also tries to show us how to avoid getting caught in heuristic traps.
Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions, 2013 and Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious, 2007 – I found this author very interesting to read. Our gut feelings are how we use heuristics to make decisions more quickly, instead of reasoning through everything in detail. He also points out that checklists can be crucial in situations where it is easy to hop over a critical step. These two books will help you understand more about how we think, or don’t, and how to be better at making decisions.
Andrew Shtulman, Scienceblind: Why Our Intuitive Theories About the World are So Often Wrong, 2017 – Shtulman has several examples of how people think wrongly about things that have been proven by science. We develop a view of the world as children and even well-educated people will have the wrong view of the world as adults. It can be very difficult for people to change the way they learned to see the world as children. It also explains why it can be so hard to convince others of things one feels sure that science has proved. I found this book very interesting to read and made me think about my own views of the way the world works.
Carol S. Dweck, Mindset, How You Can Fulfil Your Potential, 2006 – I found this author difficult to read as she used the word “I” a bit too much. However, her main idea is important. The way we think about our abilities, whether they are set for life or whether we have the potential to grow, in other words, our mindset, influences how well we get on in life. Having a growth mindset allows a person to learn new things and take on new challenges.
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives, 2005, David Eagleman, Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, 2011 and Dean Burnett, The Idiot Brain: A Neuroscientist Explains What Your Head is Really Up To, 2016 – These three books show how the brain seems to work, independent of the person that is housing it. It can be a bit disturbing to find out that you aren’t really in charge of what the brain does. But I think it is important to realize what our brain is doing for us, both the things we expect it to do, such as keep our heart beating and our lungs breathing, and also making decisions on what we see from the impulses that come in through our eyes.
There are a lot more books available on these topics, but these are the ones that I have read recently and found worthwhile reading. I think it is useful for us to be more aware of how we think, how we make our decisions and perhaps how we can use our knowledge to do better in our lives and help others.
Living in a welfare state
Meik Wiking lives in Denmark, a country that is often rated with the happiest people. In his book, The Little Book of Hygge, he tries to give examples of how the Danes keep themselves happy. He mentions, but doesn’t go into, how living in a welfare state makes people happy.
“Interestingly, there is wide support for the welfare state. The support stems from an awareness of the fact that the welfare model turns our collective wealth into well-being. We are not paying taxes, we are investing in our society. We are purchasing quality of life. The key to understanding the high levels of well-being in Denmark is the welfare model’s ability to reduce risk, uncertainty and anxiety among its citizens and to prevent extreme unhappiness.” (Meik Wiking, The Little Book of Hygge, Penguin 2016, p. 13)
This small comment in a book made me pursue these thoughts. Over the years I have read many books and watched many talks that indicate that living in a more equal society is good for everyone.
Helen Pearson gave a talk at TED2017 where she discusses how to bring up children. “I came across a little secret that we have in Britain. It’s helped me become more confident about how I bring up my own children, and it’s revealed a lot about how we as a society can help all children.” (https://www.ted.com/talks/helen_pearson_lessons_from_the_longest_study_on_human_development/transcript)
What is the secret that she is talking about? Choose your parents very carefully; don’t be born into a poor or struggling family. But of course, we don’t actually choose our parents, so what can be done about this? She goes on to discuss how parental interaction with their children (listening to them, reading to them, doing things with them) influences whether the children do well when they are grown up. But what about children who are unlucky and grow up in home that is not supportive? Why should a child suffer because they weren’t able to choose the right parents?
We all have basic human needs that need to be satisfied, which include food, housing, clothing and social relationships. Most people in Europe and North America can no longer grow enough food to feed themselves and their family. This means that people must buy their food. The same goes for clothing and housing.
But where does the money come from? Many people have jobs that give them enough income to cover their needs and a lot more. But what about those who can’t work, for whatever reason? I was just reading a book about raising children and the author commented that children will do as well as they can and that they prefer to do well. I would also like to propose that people want to have a job and support themselves, if they can find a job that suits them.
Not everyone is born with the same advantages, as Helen Pearson tells us. I know people who have been born with poor health and have had great problems holding down a full-time job, not because they don’t want to, but because they don’t have the stamina for a full-time job. Some people are born handicapped, perhaps poor eye-sight, poor hearing or an inability to do intellectual work. People with manual jobs may get poor health early in life. These are the people that a welfare state can help.
In economic terms, there have been studies done that show that if everyone gets a basic income, those who can work, will work. This basic income can provide a buffer, so that it is easier to change jobs, take time off work to have children, to look after oneself and at least work part-time. Some people need a helping hand over a longer period of time, others for only a short time.
What happens to the money that the state gives to those who receive pensions, basic income or temporary support? People spend the money. The money gets recycled into the national economic system. Some of the money goes to buying goods such as food and clothing. Some of the money will go to renting housing or buying one’s own place. Much of the money gets recycled via various types of taxes so that some of the money ends up back in the government’s coffers.
What are the benefits of the welfare state? The main benefit is that there is a safety net available for everyone. If something goes wrong, you won’t starve to death. If you lose your job, you can get unemployment income while you look for a new job. If you get sick, your medical bills are paid. If you have a child that has a disability and needs full-time care at home, you will get a basic income so that one parent can be at home with the child. Education is free so that children from disadvantaged homes can also get an education that suits them, whether it is a trade education or an academic education. These are just a few examples.
In their book, The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, (Penguin 2010), Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett document that the costs of inequality in a country include poorer mental health, higher drug use, lower life expectancy, more obesity, teenage births, more violence and lower social mobility. Countries that are welfare states are more equal. They even out these inequalities and everyone has a better life. One only has to look at the news about shootings at schools in the USA to realize that the inequality there is hurting everyone.
I live in Norway, which like Denmark, is a welfare state. I pay my taxes willingly, knowing that when I need to get help, help is there to be gotten.
Digital environment
Most of us use smartphones and computers. Many use e-book readers or digital tablets. I have a smartphone for step-counting, taking pictures, checking my email and sending text messages. I have en e-book reader that I use most days. I also use a computer, probably several hours a day.
One of the things these digital devices do is influence how much time we spend in front of a screen. Is this good for us, or have we gone too far in our lives and become addicts? For many, using smartphones and computers are part of their working life; for others, for example those using Facebook, Instagram or games, too much time is spent in front of a screen to the extent that they are not able to connect with people face to face. Now that I am retired, I no longer use a computer nearly as much during the daytime, but I am using it for other tasks than I did while working, such as writing this blog.
I enjoyed reading Alan Alter’s book, Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked (Penguin Press, New York, 2017) where he describes behavioral addiction, a deep attachment to an experience that is harmful and difficult to do without (page 22). There are many things that are difficult to do without, such as breathing, but addiction comes from something that harms us. In his book, Alter gives many examples of people with addictions to gaming, to exercise, to use of Facebook or Instagram and how it has become harmful for them. Reading this book helped me become more aware of how the digital environment influences my use of time each day.
Alter says that addiction is largely produced by environment and circumstance. These new addictions don’t involve the ingestion of a substance but they produce the same effects because they are compelling and well-designed (page 12). Technology is neither morally good nor bad. It is how it is used that determines if it is used wisely or not. Large corporations use many techniques to get us hooked, or addicted, so that they can make large sums of money.
According to Alter, behavioral addiction consists of six ingredients (page 15):
- compelling goals that are just beyond reach
- irresistible and unpredictable positive feedback
- a sense of incremental progress and improvement
- tasks that become slowly more difficult over time
- unresolved tensions that demand resolution
- strong social connections.
If you look at this list, there is nothing there that in itself is harmful for us. It is how we learn, what teachers would like to orchestrate in the classroom. But many computer games use these techniques to make their customers become involved in a fantasy world to the exclusion of the real world where we interact with people, have a job, have a life helping others, etc.
In his book, Alter looks at what behavioral addiction is and how it can happen in any of us. He looks at the ingredients of this type of addiction and how manufacturers of apps and online games get us hooked. In the third part of the book, he looks at how we can avoid getting addicted to these wonderful apps and games. Alter comes with suggestions for changing our habits, designing the environment we live in and how some of these techniques can be used to create useful things that help us learn and live better.
I found the book very interesting to read as I get worried when I read newspaper articles (online, of course) that mention that young children are not learning to hold a pencil or understand how to turn the pages in a magazine or book. When it comes to children, the parents must take charge of the environment by not allowing the use of digital devices for the very young. It is important that children learn to play on their own, learn how to have face-to-face interaction with people, both other children and adults. As a retired teacher, I get concerned about how today’s teenagers are going to avoid these behavioral addictions. As a retired person I want to avoid become an addict myself.
When it comes to adults, they must make decisions about their own environment. Most of us can choose the activities we prefer in our free time, but are we able to make decisions that are beneficial to ourselves?
I want to divide my day into different types of activities, where I spend time on most of these activities every day. Some of these activities allow me to sit; some require me to move around and use my body.
- Learning new things, for example, either how to say things in other languages than English, or how the brain works. I like to read books and to learn foreign languages online.
- I keep track of the books I have read on Goodreads. So far this year I have read 19 books.
- Duolingo keeps track of my progress in French, Italian and Portuguese, using many of the techniques of gaming that Alter mentions, but I think it is beneficial, not harmful for me.
- Personal body needs, such as eating, hygiene and sleeping. This would include keeping the environment I live in neat, tidy and clean. These are, of course, basic things that we all need to do, but it must be included in the list as quite a bit of time can go to these activities every day.
- Physical activities, such as walking. It depends on the season what the walking entails. It can be cleaning snow off the driveway, walking around a shopping mall, or heading off into the woods for an hour or two. Once the snow has gone, I will be working in the garden, but it can also include working on house repairs.
- Writing allows me to reflect on my own thoughts by putting them into words. Some of the writing will be published as blogs, but not everything needs to be shared with others. Writing is a way of processing thoughts and gives me a way to act on my thoughts. In order to make decisions, I need to be clear about the problem and the alternatives.
- Craft projects, mostly knitting or sewing things, allows me to be creative, to make things that can be useful, either for myself or for others.
- Social interaction is the hardest for me. With a hearing disability that is getting worse, I have to choose my time with others carefully. I am fortunate to live with a loving husband and so always have someone to talk to, or to discuss things with. But I also need other friends whom I enjoy being with. Being a quiet person, I prefer deep conversations to gossip. I like being with people who will go for longer walks with me, outdoors. But I also like a lot of time to myself, pottering around the house and doing whatever inspires me at the moment.
Please notice that many of the activities I choose, reduce my need for a digital environment to a few hours a day (reading and writing), though I must admit to spending up to an hour a day on meaningless activities on my computer. It is up to me to decide if this is too much and eventually how I can reduce this use of time.
Ayyam-i-Há 174
What is Ayyam-i-Há? Well, in the Bahá’í calendar, the solar year is divided into 19 months of 19 days. The year starts on the spring equinox in Teheran, Iran. This means that the year can start on either the 20th or the 21st of March in the European calendar.
If you are good at math, you will immediately have calculated that 19 times 19 is only 361 days and the solar year has 365 1/4 days. What do we do with the extra four or five days? It is a time of hospitality and gift giving, a time to be with loved ones, both within the family and close friends. Ayyam-i-Há comes just before the last month of the Bahá’í year, ‘Alá’ or Loftiness, which is the month of fasting.
What does the 174 stand for? That is the Bahá’í year we are currently in.
This year we won’t be doing a lot of entertaining. The children have grown up and live far away. We are getting older and not up to the same amount of entertaining.
I also think it is important to use the time to reflect on one’s personal values. Having spent several hours every day for the last three days shoveling snow, I have had plenty of time to think while doing manual labor out in the fresh air. The result of today’s thinking is a renewed resolve to try to put some of my thoughts into this blog so that I can share them with others. I have read about research that says that people with mental issues are helped considerably when writing for 20 minutes a day. Not everything has to be read by others. Some thoughts we keep to ourselves and perhaps throw them away once they have been written. Other thoughts we want to share with others so they can understand what our values are or our standpoint is.
For those of you who read this, I would like to extend my love and greetings to you. Enjoy the five days of Ayyam-i-Há, even if you aren’t a Bahá’í. My resolve is to write more that can be shared with others.
Hva er Ayyam-i-Há? Bahá’í Troen har egen kalender, der året er delt i 19 måneder på 19 dager. Året begynner ved vårjevndag i Teheran, Iran. Det betyr at året kan begynne på enten den 20. eller 21. mars i den europeiske kalender.
Hvis du er flink med matte, har du allerede oppdaget at 19 ganger 19 er bare 361 dager og jorden tar 365 1/4 dager å gå rundt solen. Hva skal vi gjøre med disse ekstra fire eller fem dager? Det er tid til hygge og gi gaver, tid til å være sammen med de vi elsker, både familien og nære venner. Ayyam-i-Há kommer like før den siste bahá’í måned som er fastemåneden.
Hva står 174 for? Det er det bahá’í året vi er i nå.
Iår skal vi ikke gjøre så veldig mye. Barna har vokst opp og bor langt unna. Vi har begynte å føle årene vi bære med oss og har ikke det samme energi nivå for mye festing.
Også tenker jeg at det er viktig å bruke tid til å reflektere på sine egne personlige verdier. De siste tre dager har jeg brukte flere timer hver dag for å måke snø og mens jeg gjøre manuelt arbeid ute i frisk luften, tenker jeg på mye. Resultatet av dagens refleksjon er å være flinkere til å dele mine refleksjoner i denne bloggen. Jeg har lest om forskning som har funnet at å skrive i 20 minutter hver dag hjelper de som har problemer med mental helse. Det er ikke alt som skrives som skal deles med andre. Noen tanker holder vi for oss selv, kanskje sletter vi dem når de har blitt nedskrevet. Andre tanker vil vi dele med andre slik at de forstår hva er våre verdier og hva er vårt standpunkt.
For de som leser dette, vil jeg gjerne sende dere min kjærlighet og hilsninger. Ha glede av disse fem dager av Ayyam-i-Há, selv om du ikke er bahá’í.
Social media in 2018
It’s a long time since I have written a blog, but now that I’m retired I would like to share some of my thoughts (often sparked by books I have read) and projects. I will primarily write in English, but those who read only Norwegian can skip to the end of most posts and find something in Norwegian. (Leser du bare norsk gå til slutten av teksten til å finne noe å lese på norsk.)
I have just finished reading “Writing on the Wall – the first 2,000 years” by Tom Standage (2013). Social media is not new and has been around since the Roman times, for 2,000 years, but the technology behind social media has changed over the centuries. The author uses many examples to illustrate his point. Most of his examples explain how the social media of the day helped to spread ideas to at least some of the population. He also includes a chapter on the twentieth century where there was the opposite of social media – media was one-way and broadcast.
In the past, writing letters or pamphlets was often the way of sending information to other people. Letters and information were passed on to other friends, creating a type of circulation of information, often about politics or other current ideas. The printing press just made everything go a bit quicker and allowed a pamphlet to reach more people as it could be reproduced faster. One interesting example was from Pompeii where they discovered that people had actually written on the walls of the buildings. Today we can use the internet to exchange information either through emails, blog posts, and comments on things that we have read. No longer is information only one way, but by sharing we can enrich other people’s lives. So I have been inspired to write blogs more regularly.
It is interesting to see that though many things are different, we humans still have the same needs as people did 2,000 years ago, including the need to share our ideas using the technology of the day.
Nå at jeg er pensjonist, har jeg bedre tid til nye ting. Jeg skal skrive litt om bøker som jeg har lest og de tankene som jeg får fra dem, og i tillegg vil jeg skrive litt om prosjektene jeg holder på med.
Jeg har nettopp leste en bok, “Writing on the Wall – the first 2,000 years” av Tom Standage som kom ut i 2013. Boken handler om sosiale medier og forfatteren går tilbake til gamle Roma for sine første eksemplene om hvordan folk kommuniserte med hverandre før. For eksempel, i Pompeii, skrev folk på veggene i bygningene for å gi beskjeder eller komme med kommentarer om andre.
Teknologien om hvordan vi kommunisere med hverandre har endret, men behovet for å ha skriftlige kommunikasjon med andre er ikke ny. Før skrev folk mye brev eller småhefter, som ble sendt til venner og sendt videre til andre. Når ting kunne trykkes og papiret ble rimeligere i pris, ble enda mer skrevet og delt med andre mennesker. Idag kan vi dele opplysninger og idéer gjennom email, blogs og kommentarene til hva andre har skrevet. For femti år siden var det meste av opplysningene bare en-veis, gjennom radio, fjernsyn og aviser. Nå tillater de nye sosiale medier mer to-veis kommunikasjon.
Det er interessant å se at tross mye er annerledes, menneskene fremdeles har noe av de samme behovene som for to tusen år siden, blant annet behovet for å dele sine idéer med andre gjennom bruk av dagens teknologi. Så nå at jeg har vært inspirert, har jeg lyst å dele med andre gjennom denne bloggen.
Christmas in Norway from a Foreigner’s Perspective
Today is the shortest day of the year and the Christians in Norway are busy following traditions that they learned in their childhood. Many of the traditions are good ones, including getting the family together for several days, enjoying a short holiday from work and eating special foods reserved for this time of the year. In addition many families have their favourite activities together, including baking and decorating the house.
For those of you who read this and are not familiar with Norwegian Christmas traditions, it is almost as if there is a separate month after December which lasts until New Year’s Eve. The first day of this month “JUL” is the 23rd of December. This is called “Lillejuleaften” in Norwegian and translates as the “little Christmas Eve” or the evening before Christmas Eve. This is the traditional start of the Christmas “month” where the Christmas tree is brought into the house and is decorated.
The next day is Christmas Eve, or “Juleaften” in Norwegian. The shops close early and everyone heads home to get dressed in their finery. For those who are religious, there is a visit to the church and perhaps lighting a candle on family graves beside the church. Dinner may have been in the oven while the family is out, but on the return to the house, it is time for serious celebration to begin. Visitors may arrive. Children get very excited. First there is a meal to consume and then there are presents to be opened. A very special tradition in many families is to sing Christmas carols while walking around the Christmas tree which has been pulled into the centre of the room to enable everyone to encircle it. With each verse of the carols, the direction of walking changes from clockwise to counterclockwise and back again. Children are allowed to stay up as long as they wish, finally falling asleep from exhaustion.
As a Canadian in Norway, I have always felt that the Norwegians celebrate Christmas a day early, having a large meal and presents on Christmas Eve. Santa Claus, as he is experienced in North America as someone who comes in the middle of the night with gifts, is unfamiliar here. “Julenissen”, the Norwegian equivalent, may come to families with children but he comes while they are awake bringing them small gifts. He wears a red and white outfit, often has an artificial looking white beard and has a red cap with a white band on it.
Christmas Day is less hectic, even for families with children. They have opened their presents the evening before and now have things to play with. Many will visit other members of the family and eat dinner with them. Another large meal is consumed. If the weather is nice enough, a walk can be a pleasant way to pass part of the afternoon, before it gets dark. This is considered the First Day of Christmas.
The days following this First Day of Christmas are usually numbered and many communities have their special activities for each day. For example the Fourth Day of Christmas may be a children’s party at the local community centre with music, games, food and perhaps a visit from “Julenisse” again. Another day during this week may be set aside for the adults in the community to have their party in the evening. Amateur theatre groups often present their plays at this time and the advertisements for them will not be a day in December but on, for example, the Sixth Day of Christmas.
For those who have work outside their home, the workdays may be considerably shorter than normal, though stores are starting to stay open much longer than they used to. Offices may be only open between 10 am and 2 pm. Stores will usually be closed by 5 pm instead of staying open until 8pm. Schools are closed for the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day.
This “month” of Christmas ends with New Year’s Eve where fireworks are the highlight of the evening, preferably at midnight. Those who live in towns and cities will often be able to see public displays. Those who live in smaller areas will go outside and, often in neighbourhood groups, shoot up millions of crowns worth of fireworks. I live with a view over a Norwegian fjord. We go outside (usually having to dress quite warmly) and watch others send off their fireworks. We can usually see fireworks being sent off from between 5 and 10 locations. Many of the displays are quite spectacular, though I often wonder what the wildlife in the forest thinks of all the noises.
New Year’s Day becomes a day to rest after all the activities. This is always a holiday, but those who have travelled away from home may spend the time getting back to their own home or to their place of work. Many will have spent time with loved ones and enjoyed the more relaxing days. Some will be looking forward to getting back to work and the regular workweek routines.
By the time everyone goes back to work in the New Year, the days have become just a little bit longer. The knowledge that the sun is above the horizon a bit more each day helps (though those in Northern Norway may still have to wait for the sun to actually get above the horizon) me get through the dark, cold days of January. Though it is officially winter from the winter solstice to the spring equinox, the promise of spring is around the corner bringing hope of new life in nature and more light and knowledge to mankind.