Childhood Christmases in Iceland

Christmas season, at least in my family, started at the beginning of December, or more precisely, on the first Sunday of Advent. By then we had already received our advent calendars, so we could start the countdown. The advent calendars were made of cardboard with flaps numbered from 1 to 24. Each morning, the flap for that day was opened to reveal a small, colorful picture. Sunday afternoons we’d get together with a small snack and light one candle on the Advent wreath. On each successive Sunday we’d light one more candle, until the last Sunday when all four candles glowed as we snacked on cookies and milk.
Christmas preparations started in earnest early in December as Amma, my mother and at least one aunt started baking hundreds of cookies and other sweets. One cookie especially, the ginger spice cookies, rolled out paper thin, or as thin as possible. You can now buy a tin of these at CostPlus/World Market stores. Other cookies were strictly Icelandic (or so I always thought since I’d never tasted them outside my own family. This was also the time to start deep smoking the legs of lamb so they would be ready for Christmas Eve, the day Christmas is celebrated in Iceland.

My mother had brought one special celebration with her when we moved to Iceland – Lucia Day. Early that morning my cousin Sigrún and I would dress in a long white sheet dress, with a crown of candles on our heads, or maybe just one candle since we were still so young. With Amma’s help we’d carry in a tray of cookies and half-full coffee cups to my parent’s room, and to my aunt and uncle. Of course, they’d feign total surprise.

The Christmas trees I remember had always arrived a few weeks before Christmas on a ship from Norway. Fir trees were not grown in Iceland in the mid-1940s, shortly after World War II was over. The lights we had at first were real candles. The decorations were mostly homemade chains and small woven paper baskets filled with candy. We always had a pail of water and a pail of sand next to the tree, in case the tree caught on fire. A couple of years before we moved to Canada, we’d been to Sweden and my father had bought back electric candles for the tree. Of course, that was the year that the tree didn’t catch fire, but the chimney did. The house didn’t burn at all, but was full of smoke. While the house was airing out, we slept under piles of blankets.

Christmas Eve morning my aunt and mother would cook and bake a small ham, and make a soup from the broth for the "Dopp I Grytan" (dopp ee greetahn) The meal consisted of dipping rye bread in the broth and eating it at lunch, along with various other side dishes, such as sliced eggs, pickled beets, more bread and other treats. This was to tide us all over until Christmas Eve dinner that seemed to come hours and hours and HOURS later.

As soon as the lunch dishes were dried and put away, the real Christmas meal preparations started. The smoked leg of lamb cooked for hours, while a smoky aroma filled every nook and cranny of the downstairs rooms. Then they boiled and diced potatoes in and added a thick cream sauce. Peas and carrots, the most common vegetables came next. Finally Amma made the dessert: butter pudding, smjörbúthingur which is not too different from a very thick white sauce made with butter, whole milk and sweetened with sugar, then allowed to cool. This was served with a fruit sauce, most often that I can recall it was made with raspberries.

While all the cooking was going on in the kitchen we kids, and the men in the family were not allowed to even open the door or they were immediately shooed out. We children had been warned that if we did go into the kitchen, the jolasveinn (Christmas Lad – Santa Claus) would not bother coming to the house. Other family members started arriving and then Sigrun and I had to dress up in our best clothes for the dinner. It was a BIG table in those days with aunts, uncles, great aunts, and at least once or twice a great grandmother, Amma’s mother. The table was set with the best china, the white and gold one that belonged to my mother, probably because there were enough dishes for everyone in the family who was there.

At exactly six o’clock Afi, my grandfather, would call us all to sit down at the dining table, and the meal would start. Everyone talked, or yelled to be heard, at the same time. Old voices, young voices. Squeals from the youngest two – my sister Loa and Sigrun’s brother Leo, and the last year or two, Arthur, my youngest cousin. When the meal was over, the dishes had to be washed and put away before anything else could happen. Kids were getting more and more excited, and sometimes worried that there was too much snow for the Santa Claus to arrive, because he was always on foot.

The biggest difference between Christmas in the USA and those I remember from a childhood in Iceland wasn’t in the food. It’s in the fact that there wasn’t just ONE Santa Claus but THIRTEEN of them, plus their nasty and super mean mother, Grýla. There is also the Black Cat who eats up the kids who were so bad they didn’t get any presents at all, not even a deck of cards, an absolute minimum. What’s more, there was no sleigh nor any reindeer. The Jólasvein WALKS. He doesn't fly around in a sleigh. And, there were no hourly television reports about his progress. There was no television!

There was too much excitement afoot to notice that two or three people would simply vanish. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t til many years later that my sister and I found out that my mom, aunt and Uncle Thráinn (THROW-inn) were the game players in the little Christmas "drama." We had always thought it was a friend of the family (at least when we were a bit older) who was playing Santa. After the large cloth bag was stuffed with presents, and Thráinn was stuffed into his costume, and the beard added with a floppy hat, my mother and aunt let him out through the basement door.

He trudged thru the snow, around the corner and up to the front door and banged loudly, and rang the bell repeatedly, so we would all be sure to hear that he’d arrived, and was COLD and HUNGRY. One year my mother had to feed him before he’d open the bag and give out presents. Another year, when my sister Loa was about two or maybe three years old, she dived, screaming at the top of her lungs, under the couch. My mother had forgotten she was scared to death of beards, and had made the beard fuller that year. After she was calmed down, Santa distributed the presents.

When everyone had their presents, and had had a chance to play or chat for a while, the final part of the meal was brought out. The dessert and cookies, loads of cookies, and often hot chocolate milk with whipped cream for the kids and coffee for the adults. The littlest ones got milk. Soon after the cookies and dessert had been finished, people started to leave. Not long after,all of us children were in bed and asleep.

The next day was quiet. I think some of us went to church, others stayed home. The day after, Boxing Day, was a slightly busy day with family and friends dropping by for coffee and cookies.

A week later, on New Year’s Eve, around eight or nine o’clock, the whole family, except Amma and Afi, would walk a few blocks away to a large clearing where a large fishing dory would be burned in a huge bonfire. This was a custom, started many years before, probably some time during the 18th or 19th century, that would give the fishermen and fishing-fleet a new start and good luck for the following year.

Not long after we returned home, we’d all be standing looking out the windows upstairs, the ones that would offer us a good view of the ships in the harbor, all lit up and ready for the final big show of the year – the annual fireworks. We kids would force ourselves to stay awake right to the last blast of fireworks. We were never allowed any closer to the port that night, probably as much because of the noise as to keep us safe from any stray sparks.

And, so ended my Christmas seasons in Iceland.