Today, on my way home from town, I walked past a house with Christmas lights. Not only does it seem fundamentally wrong to me to put up Christmas lights in November, but the entire front of the house was covered in twinkling, coloured lights.
Now, for my international readers, where I come from this might be considered a moderate amount of Christmas lights in someone’s yard. Most people would probably only do the one tree, and coloured lights are extremely rare. Lights might be put up in the beginning of December. The entire front of a house covered in twinkling, coloured fairy lights to me just feels completely alien. I’m now anticipating the day all the houses on Gorway road put up their Christmas lights with some dread. What a terrifying thought!
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You’ve lived in Akershus, the most Christmas light-y county in all of Norway! (Yes, some journalist did check.) Even within the borders of civilisation (ring road 3) it occasionally gets a lot worse than that picture.
Just sayin’.
They didn’t much in my town, not back then, anyways. And yes, I’ve seen the occasional spectacle, but they’re rare and they usually stick to white lights anyway, not twinkly coloured ones.
It will get worse. These days “outdoor Christmas decorations” seem to be a “neighbourhood arms race”.
I know. I’m dreading it already.
That’s pretty tastefull compared to some of the stuff that’s been popping up here. Japan doesn’t even celebrate Christmas yet all the shops have colourful, shiny santas and Christmas sales and Starbucks been playing Christmas songs since the beginning of November >,< the odd house'll do shiny, sparkly doom explotions of santas and christmas trees too. Combine that with sixteen degrees and sunny and it just feels wrong ^,^;
Then again, if Englands anything like Ireland when it comes to decorations it gonna get much, much worse for ya O,o
Ireland like I describe in #3 above then?
I can imagine that Japan would be an awesome spectacle indeed. After all, they have a history of taking tacky things from Western culture and making them even tackier.
Abi tells me there won’t be many Christmas lights along Gorway Road, because this is a primarily Asian neighbourhood and most of them don’t celebrate Christmas. But people from most of Asia like shiny things and sparkly lights, so I’m sure someone will fall to temptation anyway.
I don’t know about the Japanese, but the “Scots Chinese” celebrate Christmas, Hogmanay, and Chinese New Year at the appropriate times, in the appropriate manners, well except that they do fireworks for both Hogmanay and CNY!
*Incoherant scream of rage*
And the actual tradition for putting up christmas decorations in this country is this:
Put them up on the evening of the 24th of december. Take them down 12 days later.
WHY DID THIS CHANGE??? GAAAAAAGH!
Yeah, it really is ridiculous…
In my culture it’s traditional to put up some decorations in December, but these are NOT Christmas decorations; they’re advent decorations. Decorative candles (it’s common to have a candlestick that holds four candles, where you light a new candle for every Sunday in advent; when you reach Christmas, they’ll all be burning), stars hanging in the windows and other subtle decorations are appropriate. In Norway, the colour of Advent is usually purple, so people will use purple candles, for instance. In Finland, it’s common to hang these in the window halfway through December: http://www.peppar.fi/file/blogattachmentbigthumb/827/
In Norway, most families bring in and decorate their Christmas trees on the 23rd. According to some traditions, it’s kept until the 12th day of Christmas, and according to others it’s kept until the 21st day of Christmas (most notably a Swedish tradition, I believe). Given the vast spruce forests throughout Fenno-Scandia and our love of nature, plastic trees are quite unusual.
Exactly what it is escapes me just now (and I’m of Presbyterian extraction, so not big on liturgical calendars) but there is a liturgical reason for 12th Night.
It’s the eve of the day of the three wise men. They weren’t there on the day Jesus was born, but arrived some days later.