Something disturbing happened this morning. I woke up with the Hail Mary in my head. I'm beginning to think 12 years of private catholic schooling is taking its toll. Shoot me. Shoot me now.

An apology for the Devil - It must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case - God has written all the books.

This, my dear friend Samantha is for you:



Eat your heart out! You aren't the only armadillo on AA! Try the quiz and see how you fare. I normally wouldn't bother to post it, but I couldn't resist when I saw the result.

Okay, today in Sweden is Tjugonde Knut, the twentieth day after Christmas (and Knut's name day) and Christmas trees are being plundered by vikings everywhere. Why? Well, around the year 1000 Denmark's King Harold the Bluetooth introduced Christianity into Scandinavia. His son, Sweyn the Forkbeard (these names crack me up!), led a revolt against his father. He defeated his father, took control (love these family squabbles) and returned to worshipping the ancient Norse pagan Gods (Odin, Thor, Tyr, etc)

His son, King Canute the Great (Knut in Swedish) was considered a great and effective King and he followed his grandfather's footsteps re-introduced Christianity into Denmark (and of course the rest of Scandinavia).

He introduced the 30 day Christmas season, which begins back in December with St Lucia day until January 13th (St Canute's Day).

History lesson over. So what does this really mean? This is the day traditionally used to "kasta ut julen" ("throw out Christmas"). All of the Christmas decorations and lights are removed. Until recently it was very common to arrange a children's party on this day called "julgransplundring" (literally: looting the Christmas tree). The children play games and then take all the edible decorations from the tree - fruit, lollies, biscuits etc. The party ends when the tree is completely stripped of all decorations (reusables of course taken off) and it is thrown out into the lawn.

It's rather amusing to see the Swedes who are so well known for taking things religiously to the re-cycling station suddenly simply throw the Christmas tree out the window and leave it there! The Swedes just love the recklessness of such a fun tradition and it persists to this day. The streets here today are littered with trees thrown out by householders. The councils are less keen on this than they used to be as I guess it costs plenty to go around collecting the cast off trees. This year they are trying a new approach - they set up a collection point in the main square and if you bring your tree there, you can swap it for a voucher for I think a hot dog and drink or something like that.

But that's not as much fun as just tossing it out the window!

Me? Well, it's grey and depressing here, so I'm doing the very un-Swedish thing by leaving my lights up in the windows for at least the next week or two or until I think it's much lighter. And I have a fake tree (tsch! tsch!) so I'll keep it for next year.

I was watching this show called "Just for Laughs Gags" earlier. It was full of people playing practical jokes. There was one where this little old lady had a big butcher's knife and it innocently falls out of her bag as she's walking along and the guy behind her picks it up and says "Hey lady, you dropped your bigass knife" and she turns around and throws up her hands and starts screaming hysterically.

I am so going be that little old lady when I grow up!