"surely you have hanged up the advent sater and lit the first candle? It was the first day of advent the day before last after all" my "survive the christmas stress" advent calendar asks oh-so-innocently in swedish. I haven't, actually. No advent star, anyway, but I did burn a candle on sunday (albeit the wrong color for advent) so that's half way there. Not too bad.
Christmas preparation in this household are in fact off to a flying start with a whopping 8 christmas gifts taken care of already before the first of december, which is quite unusual as I tend to be very much a last minute shopper - always waiting for that perfect item to show up, discarding one more-than-decent option after the other on the way.
Also, I have a glow in the dark gnome in my kitchen window, and with the norwegian "nisse" having as many similarities to gnomes as to the big fat coca-cola santa claus and seeing as I live on the third floor (rendering the fly agaric mushroom in its hands indiscernible to the naked eye) this will have to suffice in place of the advent star. I do have one, and a very large one at that, but I have grown to cultivate an intense disliking for it as it is extremely cumbersome to hang up in the window, and has a tendency to burn out a lightbulb or three in the timespan it is meant to be up, forcing me to go through the indignity of trying to hang it over and over again. Nursing myself back to health from the cold from hell I'm just not up for it yet. In a few days, maybe. But in the mean time: feast your eyes on the attempt from 2007 - is that a big advent star or what?
