Christmastime 2009

Here and below: Our Christmas decorating on a shoestring!

Julekake above (that's pronounced "yu-le-kah-ga")

Norwegians often brighten up their windows with this time of year with lighted stars. Instead of that, I saved our coffee bags, which are silver and gold on the inside, and cut out stars/snowflakes. This photo is on the inside, so the silver and gold sides are facing the street.

Our "stars" from the outside.

Thought it was a nice touch--someone put a christmas tree above their basketball goal ...

I made party hats and crackers! The crackers had jokes inside (example: Good King Wenceslas phoned for pizza; what did he order? Answer: The usual: deep pan crisp and even. ... I didn't say they were good jokes.) Of course they didn't pop, but they were fun, nevertheless. We did take pictures in our hats, but I'm not posting those :-).

On Dec. 23, we went down to sentrum to look around and to purchase some fresh cod from the seafood vendor at torget for our Christmas dinner and pick up a few other items. All of the stores are closed on Christmas Eve.

This is a shopping mall located in sentrum.

Domkirke

Michael at torget. The bright light on his right is a reflector. It's a good thing to wear during the dark time (these photos were taken in the afternoon).

A very nice tradition here is to decorate gravesites with greenery and candles at Christmastime. It's very nice to look out over the cemetary and see the glowing candles and wreaths. Sometimes a little shovel is needed to clear away the snow. Wasn't too bad this year--and least you could see the gravestones above the snow. Later on they were completely covered with snow.

This is one of several services held on Christmas Eve at Elverhoy. The aisles were full of people standing through the service since there were no seats left.

This was extremely cool! These are candles inside holders made of ice. Not sure if these were made from a puchased kit, or if they were made somehow with plastic flowerpots, but it just looked great alongside the path up to their front door.

We went to the midnight service on Christmas Eve also. It was not so well attended. We were early and took a few pictures before the service began. The lady on the left is a flutist who plays at church occasionally--she is very good. On the right is Jan, the sokneprest. Several people from the coastal ship (Hurtigruten) walked up the hill to attend church--there were Americans, English, Germans ... so Jan did part of the service in English for them.

Well, it's actually nearly June now, and I don't know how I got so far behind on the blog, but I'm going to try to get caught up in the next couple of days. Here is Christmas (start at top)!