A Finnish cousin sent an email a few days ago, noting that the greetings were coming from where Santa Claus lives.
The header said "Santa Claus has left the Korvatunturi." Thanks to Google and Wikipedia, I now know that "Korvatunturi" is a fell in Lapland, located in the Urho Kekkonen National Park, featuring thick pine forests, frozen lakes and gazillions of reindeer. So Santa would have the best reindeer to choose from, and alternates in case one of their antlers stops picking up the signals properly.
I also wanted to revisit the Christmas peace, joulurauha, a tradition I learned about last year.
Declaring a Christmas peace goes back to the 13th century. Once this tradition was common to all the Nordic countries, but only in Finland has it been maintained, almost uninterruptedly, to this day.
A special
ceremony is held in Turku, Finland, to declare a period of Christmas peace. It begins
at noon on Christmas Eve and lasts for 20 days.
May this year's joulurauha last much longer and be world-wide.
Nikki
No comments:
Post a Comment