A Very Swenglish Christmas
My turn again, and this time I want to tell you about our Swedish Christmas breakfast. You know all about my Swedish connections, I think. I lived and worked there for several years in the 1970s and then I commuted between here and Sweden more or less monthly for about 15 years during the eighties and early nineties. I’ve worked in many other countries, too: a couple of years in China and lots of short contracts in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and some western European countries (such as Italy, France, Germany, Spain and Switzerland), too. I worked in Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam) last summer, and have spent short periods in numerous other countries. But Sweden long ago became my spiritual home. I don’t really know why I don’t live there now.
Our Swedish Christmas breakfast table. We even put a little string of Swedish flags on the Christmas tree, just as they do in Sweden.
This year I didn’t even manage to get there for a short holiday. Maybe that’s why I decided to invite lots of friends to a Swedish Christmas breakfast party. My partner and I went shopping for authentic Swedish food, which is very easy to find in London because there is a rather large ex-pat community of Swedes here and there are Swedish food shops and restaurants, mostly in the Marylebone area of central London.
We bought crispbreads and rusks and rye bread; herring in different sauces, Swedish cheeses, ham, meatballs and pickles. We bought sweet cinnamon buns which had been home-baked by a Swede, here in London. We made open sandwiches with cheese and sweet peppers, and others with prawns, boiled egg and mayonnaise with dill. We stuffed dates with marzipan and we put out a large plate of gravad lax with mustard and dill sauce. There were fresh bread rolls, butter, marmalade and spiced Christmas jam. We made tea and several pots of strong coffee, and we made a pan of ²µ±ôö²µ²µ – spiced red wine, served hot. And, of course, we decorated my partner’s house with Swedish and British Christmas decorations, and outside we put six large flares on the garden path up to the house. It looked very Swedish and very Christmassy.
Authentic Swedish food including crispbreads, rusks, cinnamon buns, herring, cured salmon and open sandwiches with Swedish cheeses, meatballs and pickles.
We had about forty guests but because it was early (we started at eight o’clock in the morning – well, it was breakfast!) and because my partner’s house is rather small we asked people to arrive at different times. So from eight till about ten we had a houseful of friends, coming and going, meeting each other – some for the first time – enjoying a Swedish breakfast and talking about Christmas, the year that’s just passed and the awful weather we’ve been having recently. It was especially good for me to have Lucy there, being hospitable and sociable and lovely as always.
It seems to have been a great success and it certainly made it feel like Christmas. It was dark and cold outside. We even had a little snow. We’d played Swedish Christmas music, we’d burned orange-and-clove-scented candles and my partner’s Christmas tree looked splendid sitting in the corner of the room with her presents piled up underneath it. After the last guest had left I crashed out. “I’m so tired,” I mumbled as I sat on the sofa and fell asleep – and it was only half past ten in the morning!
That evening, a good friend took me to see Ray Davies in concert at The Apollo. If you loved the sixties – and I was a teenager in the sixties – then you’ll probably have loved the music of The Kinks, Ray Davies’s band. He’s still performing like a teenager himself even though he must be in his mid-sixties now. A great evening. And we had another great evening on Tuesday when I took Lucy to The Roundhouse – another wonderful London venue – to see La Clique, a kind of cabaret-cum-circus-cum-variety show (but definitely not for children!). I haven’t had so much fun since…well, since last Christmas, actually. But it’s hard work enjoying yourself all the time. I had to have a sleep in the middle of the afternoon yesterday so that I would be awake for our neighbours’ Christmas drinks’ party that evening!
No sleeping now because Lu and I are off to the theatre. We’ve got matinee tickets for The Misanthrope, staring Keira Knightley. It’s freezing outside but we’ll wrap up in thick coats and scarves and gloves and it’ll be just like when Lucy was a small girl, going off to the pantomime for a special Christmas treat. Later, we’ll have roast chestnuts in the street, stop for a while to sing Christmas carols in Covent Garden or Trafalgar Square, and then we’ll head home for drinks with friends before sitting down just before midnight to open our Christmas presents – something we have done – just the two of us – each year since Lucy’s mum died.
It’s traditional in Britain to open Christmas presents on Christmas Day (25th December) so we always keep our Christmas stockings unopened until then.
So, we’ll get up tomorrow morning, make a Buck’s Fizz and have a small plate of gravad lax. We’ll open our Christmas stockings and have fun with the contents (balloons, jokes, party blowers, chocolate coins, tangerines, nuts and small, silly presents), and then I’ll have to get into the kitchen and start cooking the turkey and the stuffings and the vegetables…it’s exhausting me just thinking about it. It’ll be great fun, though, and the more champagne I drink the easier it will all get!
And I hope you all have great fun, too, wherever you are and however you celebrate Christmas. And to those of you who don’t celebrate Christmas, Lu and I wish you, too, all the very best of the season and for the coming year.
HAVE A PEACEFUL, LOVING AND HEART-WARMING CHRISTMAS!
Stephen Keeler
Some useful words and expressions
commuted
travelled between my home and my place of work
more or less
approximately
my spiritual home
the place where I feel most comfortable; the place where I feel I belong
ex-pat
‘Ex-pat’ is short for expatriate. An expatriate is someone who lives in a country which is not their own.
crispbreads
kinds of savoury (non-sweet) biscuit
rusks
hard, dry biscuits
rye bread
dark brown bread made with rye flour (rye is a type of cereal grass which is grown in cold countries and is used for animal feed, to make bread, and in distilling certain kinds of whisky)
herring
a long, silver-coloured saltwater fish
pickles
vegetables or fruit which have been kept in vinegar or salt water for a long time to give them a strong, sharp taste
cinnamon
a spice used for flavouring sweet food and curries
gravad lax
cured salmon
²µ±ôö²µ²µ
red wine which has been flavoured with spices and served hot
flares
large candles for burning outdoors
orange-and-clove-scented
perfumed (scented) with oranges and cloves (small, dried flower buds used as a spice)
crashed out
fell asleep involuntarily
venue
place where an event (performance, for example) takes place
-cum-
You put - cum - between two words to form a compound noun referring to something or someone that is partly one thing and partly another.
matinee
afternoon performance of a film or play
chestnuts
nuts from the chestnut tree, which are roasted and eaten in the winter and especially at Christmas
Christmas stockings
socks or sock-shaped pockets which are traditionally filled with small, inexpensive presents at Christmas
Buck’s Fizz
champagne and orange juice
party blowers
rolled-up tubes of paper with a mouthpiece which you blow into to unroll the tube and make a loud noise, at parties (or if you’re really unlucky at four o’clock in the morning on Christmas Day when your children can’t wait a moment longer to find out what presents Santa Claus has brought them: a good way to waken sleepy parents, then!)
tangerines
small, sweet oranges
Guiseppina (Italy), what a nice story, and so well told (well done!). Anita (Slovakia), very clever – you found the Beatles’ title in my second blog (answers on 28 December). Have you spotted the Beatles’ title in this blog? And Kristin (China), what a lovely little life story. Thank you so much. I enjoyed all your comments and I really do appreciate it when you post them.
Comments
happy new year:)
Stephen, it is a Christmas Eve morning here in Oulu, Finland, I am still busy with the last minute wood preparations. My traditional carrot and rice bake is in the oven, I am still indecisive how, when and what with we will have our Christmas ²µ±ôö²µ²µ. I enjoyed reading your blog. What an effort you made to have a Swedish breakfast, certainly your friends must have appreciated you. Our weather is lovely at the moment, quite a bit of snow and freezing temperatures. We (my husband and me) are about to leave and visit my father, who lives some 70 kilometers away, then we will visit graveyards and light candles on the graves of our close ones and in the evening have a light supper before opening our presents. My daughter and her fiancé are coming to have the main dinner tomorrow. This year we will have – amongst other things – home made herrings marinated in Sherry. Peace and love from Finland
Hello Stephen, you did a grand Chrismas treat to your friends and neighbourers by celebrating in a unique way. I enjoyed reading your blog about the 'Swenglish Breakfast'. I wondered if i could ever arrange such personally highlighted event. My wife is German, so a bit of me always gets fever for sort of a teamwork in terms of celebrating chrismas. I wish you and your lovely lu a Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year's Eve .
Hi. "I want to tell you" that I really liked your blog, "because" your Swenglish Christmas food is rather alike what my childhood's Xmas food in Finland was. Wow, is that the word for the Swedish smörgås: open sandwich? By the way, I only now thought of the photo from Lucy's "birthday". Thanks for sharing. I wish you and Lucy a merry Christmas.
Hallo Stephen! I've just found two Beatles' titles in your blob: - Something (George) - Two of us (John and Paul) Merry Christmas!
Thank you. You always make me fill warm inside and this is specially nice in this days. Merry Christmas to you, to your loved Lucy and your partner too
Thank you very much for the story, i really enjoyed reading.
Dear Mr Keeler! Maybe you are surprised that I don't say 'Hello Stephen' but I'm an old fashioned woman who began to learn English at a time others think about how to create their old age. I'm some years older than you and so a have problems to use such a casual title. I didn't learn English at school and there was no need for learning it because we had no chance to travel to English speaking countries. But then, after the border was opened the situation changed and as I visited Afica the very first time (in between I have been there six times by now)I was ashamed because I wasn' able to speak English and therefore I began to learn English at an evening class once a week. At this time I still went to work and in the evenings to the English class. It was a time with ups and downs (more downs). I was alwys the oldest student. OK, I had no problems to get up with the others, the younger students. The problem was another one, most of them had learnt English at school and so they knew many more words than me and understanding was and is one of my greatest difficulties. I often thought I would never be able to have a conversation in English and I then wanted to interrupt the course. At this time I found ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Learning English and your column by chance. It was just "chicken soup for my soul"! Your wonderful empathetic kind of teaching and corresponding showed me it would be better to continue my studies. I printed out all your blogs from 2006 and 2007, and I have set up a green folder for these documents. At the moment I can see it in front of me on my desk. You are the kind of teacher students all over the world want to have, I'm sure. As your student they don't have to worry about making a mistake. All can be sure you don't laugh at the mistakes they make. You always give the feeling to be on the right way! In my opinion learning a foreign language would be easier and make more fun with a teacher like you! Another point I want to talk about is your openness. You opened your heart to the students and I think this is the second aspect why they all love you. I remember last December, a lot of us hoped so you would give a sign of life in the open blog! Now you are back and I read your interesting comments with great pleasure. I wish you and your lovely daughter Lucy who has got the best father of the world all the best. May you both be healthy, happy and successful in 2010. Felicitas I wish you and
Hi All, This is Ashutosh and it's my first visit to this blog space. I liked it a lot. Cheers and wish you happy new year!
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