You are never too late!

I have been thinking about the 3 Kings for the past weeks. I sometimes feel that the 3 Kings are my kindred spirits. They were even more dilatory about Christmas than I am. Some biblical scholars speculate that the Wise Men may have arrived at the stable two years after the birth of Christ. I'm not that late, yet.

Even though the 3 Kings were late arrivals to the manger, they are still an important part of the Christmas pageant at our church. The pageant is open to any child from the youngest stars to the middle school students who are expected to handle the more taxing parts: Mary, Joseph, Gabriel. Middle school consists of that funny age when the potential Marys are all much much taller than any possible Joseph.

One Joseph candidate (tall enough middle school student) turned down the role. He informed his mother that this year he would be the Whiskey King. And you may ask where the Whiskey King fits in to the story. Well, in our church one of the 3 kings carries a Crown Royal bottle spray painted gold - hence a new hero is born: Whiskey King.

At the top of the post is a column capital from Autun Cathedral. My friend Inez told me about it. I love the fact that the 3 kings are sleeping together under a blanket and the angel is prodding them to get a move on with one long, angelic finger. "Get up sleepy heads and follow yonder star!"

According to tradition and the church calendar, the Kings will arrive at the manger on Epiphany, January 6. In Finland the Christmas holiday will last until Epiphany or Loppiainen. Here kids return to school on January 3.

I could write more about the kings. I have been to Cologne and seen their reliquary. But, I have to prepare for church. I will end with T.S. Eliot's poem about the 3 Kings:

Journey of the Magi

'A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a journey:

The ways deep and the weather sharp,

The very dead of winter.'

And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,

Lying down in the melting snow.

There were times we regretted

The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,

And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and grumbling

And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,

And the night-fires going out, and thelack of shelters,

And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly

And the villages dirty and charging high prices:

A hard time we had of it.

At the end we preferred to travel all night,

Sleeping in snatches,

With the voices singing in our ears, saying

That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,

Wet, below the snow line, smelling ofvegetation;

With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,

And three trees on the low sky,

And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,

Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,

And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.

But there was no imformation, and so we continued

And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon

Finding the place; it was (you may say)satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death?There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt.I had seen birth and

death,

But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

Advent calendars to see and hear

Tomorrow will be the third Sunday in Advent. At the choir party today, we adults marveled at how quickly Christmas was coming. I remember time passing much more slowly as a child. I fell behind on the advent calendar this year. One moment it was Thanksgiving and the next...Advent!

We are recycling our advent calendar from last year, but I found some great advent calendars on the web!

Here is a wonderful on line advent calendar from the this is Finland web site. Each day has a special craft. I like the idea of making caramels from behind door no. 9.

Maybe I will make caramels while listening to the musical advent calendar presented by the Finnish Broadcasting Company, YLE. While this introductory video is all in Finnish, it is fun to watch the elf creeping around in the background. For December 6, the advent calendar has this lovely Sibelius piece.

And to drink while making Finnish crafts and listening to Finnish music: Glog of course!

I found recipes for Finnish glögi on line. I loved black current glögi when I had it at Kerttu with Keisha after language class. I am adding black current juice to my shopping list.

It is already 11.12 in Finland so feel free to listen to this!

Christmas Music and Global Warming

Everyone knows that Santa lives in Finland! Therefore, it is only fitting that I listen to Jouluradio all day. It is hard to get bored with Christmas music when it is sung in Finnish and Swedish.

It was only last year that my daughter addressed this envelope to Santa. You can see that, while she still believed in Santa, she wasn't quite buying the Finnish location. American kids have the idea of the North Pole drilled into their heads. Too many viewings of Rudolph and the reindeer bullies to quite shake the iconic image of a pole at the top of the world.

As the daughter of a geographer, I have learned to rely on maps. The map shows that it would be impossible for Santa to raise a herd of lichen eating reindeer in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, even if the polar ice cap is in tact. I recently signed an on line petition encouraging the Discovery Channel to air all the episodes of the upcoming series "Frozen Planet". Apparently, the Discovery Channel decided to show the final episode where David Attenborough studies climate change at both poles.

With a liquid North Pole, Santa must be in Finland.

But even if Santa is raising his herd of sleigh pulling reindeer in the sanity of Finland, he is not immune from global warming. It has been a mild winter in Helsinki and in Concord. Not mild enough to raise a tortoise in our house, but mild nonetheless.

Just for a change from Christmas music, you can listen to Stan Rogers sing about the Northwest Passage as you consider global warming.

You Learn Something New Every Day

I can waste hours on FaceBook reading everyone's posts and looking at the graduation pictures of kids I don't know (yes, I posted some of an important fifth grade graduation) that pop up at this time of the year. But the wonderful thing about FB is the tidbits of information that appear on my "wall". Because I liked NPR on FB, this story appeared on my FB page: Russian Women Prove it's Hip to be a Babushka. What fascinated me about this story was not the music or the charming woven birch shoes in the video, but the fact that the women are from the Udmurt republic, where the language is in the same Finno-Ugric family as Finnish.

I expected the Udmurt Republic to be somewhere near Lake Ladoga, but it is actually far to the east. Udmurtia is surprisingly distant from Finland. Like Finnish, the Udmurt written language was not developed until the 18th century*. Unlike Finnish, Udmurt is written using the Cyrillic alphabet. Another distinguishing feature of the Udmurts is the predominance of red hair. A population of gingers speaking a Finnishy language written in Cyrillic. The more I learn, the more I realize I have so much more to learn.

And what about Udmurt literature? You can friend Udmurt literature in Estonian translation on FB. I have, but since I understand less Estonian than Finnish it won't be a lively site. Maybe I can find some Udmurt literature for my Kindle. Amazon has a wide selection of translated fiction available for the Kindle. You have to search under World Literature. It is fun to have a world of World Literature within reach of your wi-fi. Sadly I could only find 3 items on Amazon with a search for Udmurt. One item is a children's folk tale and I am tempted by the I Speak Udmurt hat, but the third item does not succumb to Google translate.

Keep your ears open for news of Udmurtia. Now that I have learned that this region of Russia exists, it will suddenly be all over the papers. And, thanks to the babushkas, maybe the country will be famous for singing women in birch shoes rather than infamous as birthplace of the Kalashnikov.

*actually, written Finnish was developed earlier in a religious context. You can read more about the development of written Finnish on my blog!

The Humor of Hesari or "serious leglessness" a phrase to remember!

I love the sly humor of the English edition of Hesari. Just read the entire story and enjoy!

Hockey team's drunken antics lead to official talking-to

Video of Nurminen's hard landing at airport goes viral

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The Finnish Lions ice hockey team, welcomed home on Monday by 100,000 adoring fans as they brought with them Finland's second IIHF World Championship trophy, have come in for criticism in some quarters over the state of serious leglessness displayed by some players and staff on their arrival back on home soil.
Anyone who watched the scenes either at the airport or in the city centre will have found it hard not to notice that a good many players were suffering from the morning (or afternoon) after the night before, and some seemed to have avoided the throbbing pain of a hangover by earnestly continuing their drinking.

Whilst Mikael Granlund's wonder goal against Russia in the semi-finals has racked up a huge number of hits on YouTube and other sites, he is fast being joined by the embarrassing prat-fall of the team's goalkeeper coach Pasi Nurminen at Helsinki-Vantaa Airport.
Nurminen emerged from the aircraft looking much the worse for wear and stumbled on the bottom step of the airstairs, crashing into the World Championship trophy as he spread his not inconsiderable frame on the red carpet.
The trophy had a very visible dent in it by the time it appeared before the public in the Market Square, though whether this was the imprint of Nurminen's forehead or something else is unclear.

Another member of the squad, team manager Timo Jutila (who also captained the 1995 World Championship winners) was seen to be rather dazed and confused, and he elected not to go up onto the podium with the others when the team arrived at the square in an open-topped bus to be fêted by fans.
Initially it was thought he had been taken ill, but Jutila himself declared he had an ankle inflammation.
This expression seems set to become a new Finnish euphemism for being totally wasted.

In many ways, the criticism of the players and others for their condition is a bit steep, given the general Finnish relationship with alcohol, but on the other hand, the team are looked up to as role-models by many young people, and this aspect was brought out by Minister of Culture Stefan Wallin (Swedish People's Party), whose portfolio also includes sports.
Wallin reportedly spoke to the Finnish Ice Hockey Association's chairman Kalervo Kummola on the matter, noting that whilst every Finn understood the elation that the players felt after their victory in Bratislava "it should nevertheless be remembered that sports personalities are setting an example for children and young adults".
The team's head coach Jukka Jalonen admitted that the celebrations of some individuals had got rather out of hand, and expressed the hope that they had not caused offence.

Many commented on the online forums that the new generation of players are nothing like the "old school" types (who would include both the members of the coaching staff mentioned above), and it was also noted that this sort of behaviour was these days uncommon as a public spectacle - not least because there were precious few opportunites to celebrate a great victory in this way.
In truth, there were occasions in the past when players' self-discipline failed them, but these generally only made it over the news threshold when someone was "sent home to sober up" in the middle of a tournament.

The general sentiment now seems to be that nobody in their right mind would begrudge the team members the chance to let their hair down, but that maybe their timing - in the full glare of the media and the public - was a shot rather wide of the goal.
Next time - and hopefully there will be future occasions like this to rejoice in trophies won - they would do better to keep things in check until they have gone through the necessary formalities.
The summer recess will offer plenty of opportunities for more private off-camera celebration.

Pointy Shoes and the Influence of Finnish Fashion

It is very possible that this could be an elaborate internet hoax, but I have chosen to fall for it. Long, pointy, totally impractical cowboy boots are a fashion sensation in northeastern Mexico. You can read about them here. And you should enjoy this video as well. It is long, but I recommend watching the entire clip:

The pointy boots immediately brought to mind the Leningrad Cowboys. Is it possible that there is a Finnish-Mexican connection? I was introduced to the Leningrad Cowboys through the movie by Aki Kaurismäki. And that brings this blog back to Finland by way of Cannes. Aki Kaurismäki is in Cannes with his new film Le Havre. I can't wait.

Wannabe Finns

I will have a hard time getting Chris to remove this jacket any time soon. Happily for him it is cool enough to wear the jacket this week. We are carrying on a 2 person hockey celebration here in NH. As one friend pointed out, "You never watch hockey". Au contraire. I have watched Finland demolish Sweden twice. Last night in English. In Estonian on Sunday on the internet.

Neither one of us is Finnish. Nor do we share a drop of Finnish blood. But that doesn't stop us from being wannabe Finns. Watch this video on the Helsingin Sanomat web site here. You will want to be Finnish too.