I also slept past 5:00 am, past 6:00 am almost to 7:00 am and that is the best gift. Well the massage was the BEST, but the extra sleep was lagnaippe!
But Christmas Eve, oh Christmas Eve what a time it was! Smorgasbord...... glorious food and friends in a beautiful setting and completely DRENCHED in rain. Awful Awful weather and I have to brag...... THAT did NOT stop people from coming out in it to be with us and share their day with us. What an honor! What a blessing!
Every year, and this is our 4th, it gets better. We try to stay authentic to Swedish tradition but it does take on an American flavor. (I should state, a TEXAS flavor. Jan stays much truer to the Swedish) and next year we are going to step i t up and learn the songs they sing as they knock back the snapps. So far, we merely toast to everyone's health and down it goes! And down it goes indeed. Jan found Aquavit from Aquavit in New York and it was sublime.
We have kept the cold and hot foods separated this year (which I have only recently learned is a requisite to authentic Smorgasbord) and this year there was no food left.
Even the Jansson's Temptation was gone! The liquor ran out and a good friend (and his good son), who had actually come and gone to another function and RETURNED, went out on a beer run. DO we have good friends OR WHAT?
At one point, Rachel introduced us to what is surely going to be a staple: this crazy game where you get in a circle and throw a die to get 6. If you do, you jump in the center of the circle and jam a hat on your head, wrap a scarf around your throat and mittens on you hands and pick up a fork and a spoon and begin unwrapping a small "gift". You can keep up the work until someone else rolls the 6 and you must undress and let them have a go at it. Round and round it goes until the unwrapper gets to the center, which is a huge bar of chocolate and has to unwrap that and start eating. The "Winner" gets the prize!
Our winner was our vegan who could not eat the chocolate because it was Milk chocolate but she is such a good sport that she tried to spoon feed about half the chocolate to others and really, the REAL reason she won is that Rachel accidentally knelt on the die which was made of paper and squished it out of service. So the game ended on a technicality but not before I got a few shots of the madness. Here you see Katy at it, getting the hat ripped off her head and Margee with her winning bow!
We had an abundance of young people in our midst. This is one of the most surprising things about our Smorgasbord. I wish I thought to ask them to pile on the sofa earlier when there were even more Under 30s. The energy from this group is amazing..... I wish I could point them all out and tell you a little about each of them. Suffice it say, there is enough talent there to start a new colony and populate it with intelligence, humor, insight, humanity, sheer determination and education. And Internationality.
And goofiness!
All this and no one felt the need to burn a goat. Amazing how that works!
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