Prepare Ye, The Way!

The day of "Thanks" is over and now it’s time for "Giving". It begins earlier every year, but all stores were ready, stocked and open for customers on "Black Friday", the day after Thanksgiving. In ancient times, there was a festival consisting of a mid-winter sacrificial feast celebrated with bright lights marking the transition from dark winter to spring and summer. The celebratory beverage was known as jul. This has evolved into today's julmust, a soft drink that, in Sweden, outsells Coca-Cola during current Christmas seasons.

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This ancient festival became known as Christmas, a time for celebrating the harvest, fertility, birth and death. In the 900’s, King Haakon I decided that the heathen custom of drinking jul (Yule) was to be moved to December 25th, in honor of the birth of Jesus Christ, and gradually, the pagan feast was Christianized. The name Jul was retained, but the holiday was dedicated to Jesus Christ. Christmas became a mixture of ancient heathen and Christian traditions. In Sweden, and other countries, great joy comes in the preparation. The "Gettting There" becomes almost as much a joy as the real thing!

---------------------------------------------------- Advent is the Christian season marking the preparations for Christmas. In Norway, it is celebrated with advent candles. Usually four candles set in a candelabra. The first is lit on the first Sunday of Advent-four Sundays before Christmas. Another candle is lit each Sunday, making the "Countdown" to Christmas Eve, December 24th. The final, middle candle is lit December 25.

------------------------------------------------------------------ In the Scandinavian countries of Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Denmark and Finland, there is a tradition of having a so-called Advent calendar, or Julekalender. Over the years, there have been several different kinds of julekalender marking the days to Christmas. Some are directed at adults while others are designed for the children. Many are woven into TV Shows that begin on December 1 and end on the 24th. The Julekalender was first aired on Swedish TV in 1960 with the program called Joulukalenteri.

---------------------------- These "count-down" calendars often featured 24 windows that would be opened one-a-day, featuring a biblical saying, gift, or maybe a treat. The first widespread advent calendars evolved from a collection of 24 gingerbread cookies with numbers made of melted sugar!. Today, most Swedish children get a Swedish Television Calendar based on a serialized story that they can follow as they open each window while viewing the show.

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So, the count-down to Christmas has begun. Last Sunday marked the lighting of the first Advent candle with only three more to go!

Many of us have given daily gifts counting down The Twelve Days of Christmas, while other countries enjoy doubling their fun!

When is Thanksgiving Day in Scandinavia?

Every American schoolboy and schoolgirl is fully aware of pilgrim hats and Indian costumes when November comes. Plymouth Rock and the Mayflower are common knowledge as they happily take part in the annual pagentry. Looking for celebrations of this event in overseas countries is a different story. Thanksgiving Day is a North American celebration, however the sense of appreciation for a bountiful harvest is shared by all. ---------------------- One mention of "Thanksgiving Day" is noted in Swedish tradition, however it is a Sunday in the Swedish ecclesiastical year ( the second Sunday of October) , and if one does not go to church, it isn't noted at all! On this day, the Swedish church is decorated with produce of the harvested apples, potatoes, carrots and the like, while twigs and colored leaves decorate the altar. The collection might be sent to relief organzations to aid the needy.

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Throughout history, mankind has celebrated the bountiful harvest with thankful ceremonies. Before the establishment of formal religions, many ancient farmers believed their crops contained spirits which caused the crops to grow and then fade. They believed that these spirits would be released when the crops were harvested.

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Canadians celebrate their days of Thanks each year on the second Monday of October (which is Columbus day in the US). The Canadian celebration is not based on a harvest, but for the survival of travellers who arrived after a long journey from England, having struggled through a voyage of storms and icebergs to the area they called New France. Martin Frobisher, an explorer, was tryingto find a northern passage to the Pacific Ocean. These French settlers typically had feasts at the end of the harvest season.

This painting " The Order of Good Cheer", a 1606 print by Christopher Jeffreys depicts food carriers in Canada during their harvest festival.

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Harvest festivals have been a part of history. Ancient Greeks worshiped many gods and goddesses. The goddess of grain was Dementer and honored in a festival on October 4th. The Egyptians celebrated their harvest festival in honor of Min, their god of vegetation and fertility. This festival was held in the springtime, the Egyptian harvest season. They wept and pretended grief at their harvest as they tried to deceive the spirits that inhabited the crop. They feared the spirit would become angry when the corn was cut away and begged forgiveness for having to take the spirits home away.

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Here in America, our "Thanksgiving Day" centers around the autumn of 1621 as 53 surviving pilgrims celebrated the sucessful hunt, as they did in the Old Country, along with 90 Native American indians who had helped the small band of people survive the past year. Hunters were sent out to harvest five deer that provided the three day feast for the celebration. This print is entitled " The First Thanksgiving" by Edward Winslow".

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The first recorded religious Day of Thanksgiving was held in 1623 to celebrate a providential rainfall. The tradition of our American Thanksgiving Day was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. Our festival has become one day to give thanks and the day before "Black Friday" with happy days ahead! 'Tis the season!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Where Are We?

Sometimes, driving around country roads turning left and right causes the driver to, occasionally, not believe "The Navigator's" decisions on what direction or where we are! ( She's not ALWAYS right!) One fun trick is to point the hour-hand of the wristwatch at the sun. One-half-way between that point and 12 will be south. It works! So, how did those Vikings travelling across the North Atlantic day and night manage to get where they wanted to go? Not too many had a wristwatch, so what were their navigational aids? And what happens in stormy or foggy weather?

While they were near shore, the Vikings could easily follow seabirds, watch wave patterns, stars and the sun-position. Leaving the shorelines and following the normal east-west routes required some navigational skills. The sun provided the basic aide, but cloudy and foggy days, combined with stormy nights with winds changing directions would leave one to believe that some discoveries were, in fact, accidental happenings.

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One Icelandic saga describes an occasion, during stormy, snowy weather, King Olaf discussed their ship direction with Sigurd. Checking Sigurd's answer, Olaf "reached into his tunic and withdrew a stone". "Looking at the cloud-filled sky and the changing brightness of the stone as he turned it in his hand, he pointed out the direction to continue their travels". This stone is now known as a "sunstone", a stone commonly found in Iceland.

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In 1967, Thorkild Ramskou, a Danish archaeologist, speculated that Viking sunstones might have been Icelandic spar, a clear calcite crystal. Calcite acts as a prism, splitting incoming rays of light in two, known as birefrigence. This property makes the crystal light or dark when held up to light of different polarizations. Viking legends mention a stone that , when held up to the sky, revealed the position of the sun, even on overcast days or when the sun was below the horizon.

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To use the crystal, the Vikings would have held the stone up to the center of the sky ( from their perspective). When sunlight hit the crystal, that light became polarized and broken into the two beams. Researchers have found that if they put a dot on top of the crystal and look from below, two dots appear, due to the refraction of the Icelandic spar. They could then pinpoint the sun by rotating the crystal until both dots line-up and were of equal brightness. So, Olaf had a sunstone,and while rotating the crystal and balancing the light and colors, he found the position of the sun.

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The optical effect of this crystal appears to be due to reflections from the stone's property of red copper, imbedded in the form of small scales, which are hexagonal, rhombic or irregular in shape.

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All this before the age of the compass, and the well-known electronic voice of Mrs. Garmin " Turn left at the corner" and "recalculating". We've come a long way, sometimes accidentally.