Ouch!... how they can bubble up in December, all those emotional memories which leave us in peace most of the rest of the year !  As the days get shorter and gloomier during the last month of the year many of us succumb to nostalgia about (often idealized) childhood Christmases.

One doesn't need to be an elderly, lone survivor or a stalwart single to fear the last week of December. Individuals surrounded by family and friends during the Christian holiday can also be wary of the occasion.  The intended Christmas peace doesn't always translate into armistice at family gatherings. 

We long for those who are no longer around and we still want to believe that everyone was as happy as we, the children, were back then.  Even if life has taught us to see the reality behind the "Christmas Truce" and unwelcome memories have had time to surface: of a mother exhausted by weeks of slaving away in the kitchen and of Christmas meals spoiled by family tensions.  Some years sad news about relatives or friends stricken by tragedy or about dramatic events in faraway countries dampened the joy for the adults. Recollections of bad grades brought back from school just before the holidays are still smarting, and we'll never forget the Christmas Eve when the canary flew away into the freezing night or the year the family dog was dying.

We do however mostly remember the joyous moments and here are some happy recollections of childhood Christmases in a small town, not much more than a hole in the snow, in northernmost Sweden. 

FALLING IN LOVE WITH BYZITA FROM BENSBYN

From as long back as I can remember, it was my duty and  great honor to choose the family Christmas tree.  One of my big brothers would carry it home, but from the second week of December, I spent most of my free time down on the town square where men from the surrounding countryside were selling their trees, rows and rows of them lined up in the snow.  Hardy, furry horses decked out with jingle bells  transported the trees into town on  big sledges.

I always bought our tree from the same man, who came from a village called Bensbyn.  Not because his trees were the best looking.  On the contrary: they were mostly scrawny with sparse branches.  But because I loved his horse.  Byzita was a smallish, short-legged mare, muscular from hauling tree trunks through  deep snow in the forest.  Her coat was long and shaggy of a dark brown, her muzzle was velvety and she had the most melancholic eyes.   I would make a detour to the square on my way to and from school with my pockets full of sugar cubes and carrots.  I still want to believe that she remembered me from year to year, that it was  a two-way love story.

ONLY MOTHER IS AWAKE

It was difficult for a little girl to fall asleep the night before Christmas Eve.  Every year, I would tiptoe up in the night, attracted by delicious smells, noises and music coming from the kitchen.  It could be long past midnight but my mother was still busy by the stove. She looked exhausted and flushed from the steaming dishes she was preparing: home-made bread, ham-on-the-bone, spare ribs, potato and red beet salads, various kinds of herring, smoked and marinated salmon, mustard and applesauce to go with the ham,  and probably a dozen or more traditional delicacies, not to mention the various cheeses and desserts.

Television had not yet  reached our small town, and radio programs usually ended early. But on the night before Christmas, Sveriges Radio used to broadcast a program called "Endast Mamma är Vaken" ("Mother Alone is Awake") until the wee hours.  It was  a potpourri of music and musings by a well-known female journalist and her invitees to keep the spirit up of all the country's women who were still working in their kitchens, alone, red-eyed and worn out.

In Sweden, it was a tradition on any festive occasion, be it  Christmas, birthdays or receptions, to offer "sju sorters kakor" or seven different kinds of cookies, cakes and pastries.  At Christmas they also included ginger cookies  - which for some inexplicable reason are called "pepparkakor" in Swedish - though they don't contain any "peppar" (pepper) at all.  Pepparkakor were baked well before Christmas and before  "Sankta Lucia" (December 13) - the only saint still celebrated in Protestant Sweden.  The whole family was allowed to participate when our mother was making pepparkakor.  And to last through all the holidays, there were lots of cookies made that day,  in all shapes and forms.