Even before waking this morning, I admit to a mood a bit more Scrooge than Santa. The local FaceBook page got me cross as early as the 15th, when a resident at the far end of our village posted a shot of the anonymous letter shoved through her door telling her how vile her outside decorations were – sparking a long round of “Well, we know who wrote that!” and “It wasn’t me, I love her Christmas lights!” “Yes, you did, it’s your writing!”. Five reports of Santas and deer and lights stolen from outside people’s houses in the night over the course of last week just made the point that some people don’t care about landing on the naughty list.
Me? I’m full of Christmas dinner, and the cats are full of the turkey that would have been my share – already turning their noses up at freshly cooked poultry, and it’s not even the 26th yet. Slumped horizontal in the warm, sure there’s nothing decent to watch on TV and with a short story to finish for the Globe Soup competition that closes in a week’s time. Plus a terrific idea queued up behind it, courtesy of a book about fantasy writing sent to me by a friend for Jolabokaflodit.
The Jolabokaflodit began in 2019, for me, though I’m told it’s a Scandinavian tradition. The idea is that you give a book to a friend to be opened and read on Christmas Eve. I tried it out on friends in 2020 – got two books in return, one so sad that I struggled to finish it; the other so lyrical I bought the next two books in the trilogy within a fortnight. This year, three books have landed on our doorstep, and I have a new tradition to pass around – la Befana, the good witch who can be persuaded to send a friend a present to open on January 6th. I am waiting impatiently for that one, and in the meantime – hoping the Meanie Spirit flies away from our village before anyone is tempted to steal our guardian demons from our doorstep.
Hope your Christmas has been more good than evil, and that 2022 brings a better time for us all.
Julia Chalkley 
I’m seriously thinking of resurrecting the old tradition of fasting for advent – eaten so much in the run-up to Xmas, I barely had room for the lamb and yule log yesterday! would love to see the controversial decorations, though.
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I’ll see if I can track them down and post a photo – I don’t think it was the house that ended up on TV for the sheer scale and brightness of them, though. We are fasting till we can find space for something beyond a mug of tea right now.
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