Knut and confused

“What is important is to spread confusion, not eliminate it.” 

 Salvador Dalí

 I love living in Sweden, especially when it means you get to be lazy.

Up north, those crazy Swedes like to leave their Christmas tree and decorations all in place for quite a bit and it’s not until 20 days after Christmas, that you actually have to bother taking them down. So that’s a good 3 weeks of post-Christmas lulling around you can enjoy, before you need to get your butt off the couch to start packing things away.

And of course, in the Swedish tradition of order and precision, there is a special day for this. A lot of Sweden pulls out the bubble wrap and starts to take down Christmas, all at the same time. And there is cake. And a song. And I like it.

St. Knut’s Day is celebrated 20 days after Christmas on the 13th of January. Christmas is danced away, the tree is thrown out and treats and cake are eaten. In households with rampant Swedish yuletide glee, old ‘Knut’ visits your home in a ragged costume and plays practical jokes on the kids and knocks on the walls to scare out any Santa Clauses that may be hiding in the house.

This year, in our household the Swedish glee was rampantly confused. Let’s just say that someone had a sleep in whilst someone else packed away the Christmas stuff. When TSH awoke a little later, he informed me that I had done a great job, but I was one week early. Dang. Turns out my zeal for being a good Swedish wife was balanced with my complete lack of zeal for the Swedish language and somehow I mixed up the holidays of Epiphany and St. Knut’s, not knowing when I should be genuflecting or pulling down the Christmas tree. And that pretty much sums up my Swedish life for the most part, walking around in some type of grammatical induced confusion, still not knowing which way to look before I cross the road.

I got cake though.

[Photos courtesy of Helena Wahlman/imagebank.sweden.se]