We're visiting some family, we'll get back home for New Year's. But for now, nature documentaries and Trivial Pursuit are fine. It's been chilly this week and going outside requires extra preparation. I had forgotten what winters can be like - last year my cold months were spent in mellow and autumnal Scotland, where a minor snowfall was considered the catastrophe of the decade.

It's rural and so slow that I lost my train of thought.

Some window displays around the city:

 

 

This year I got into the holiday spirit quite late in the game, and Christmas Eve came almost without noticing. We are spending the holidays at home, just the two of us, and a couple of cats. For 19 years, my Christmas was very traditional, almost like routine - a big family Christmas at my grandparents, with all the traditional food, sic, Santa, and mostly waiting for Santa. Some natural passings changed the tradition, but I was always a bit stuck on the past.

This year, there will be no traditions just for the sake of tradition, but well, some traditions, just to make sure it feels like Christmas. But no traditional foods no one really likes: we are making Christmas pizza! There will also be some sweet potato casserole and for my boyfriend, Karelian hot pot brewed in red wine. We'll be watching a lot of films, munching on chocolate, unwrapping presents, spending time with crossword puzzles and for the first time, taking a walk to the cemetery nearby. We don't know anyone buried there, but maybe some solstice magic will take place. At least there will be some candles for the atmosphere. I would also love to go wandering around the quiet city, which is bound to be almost as ghostly as during Midsummer.

We don't have a Christmas tree, but at least there are some silvery glitter things, and the scent of hyacinth and peppermint. It's warm and quiet.

I have come to realize that I am actually not, despite my career of choice, the artistic one in the relationship. My boyfriend, who works as a translator, makes the coolest Christmas cards.

 

They are pretty avant-garde, I think. My current favourite is the cat one.

 

It's the darkest day of the year. Yet I've seen more sun than in weeks, since I've been busy getting work done indoors, from before dawn until after dusk. Only a few days until sweet nothingness, good food, an empty city.

I went ice skating for the the first time in years. My ankles are sore like they always were. My dad taught me to ice skate - my mum never learnt to skate on proper skates, she only had blades to attach to her shoes, when growing up. It amazes me. Winter solstice ice skating, one of the great things in life.

My interest in the movements of celestial bodies is rekindling. Sometimes I get caught up in the quotidien, but greater things are taking place, and letting me in.

 Dublin, maybe Grafton Street

Another day to be spend in front of a computer researching and writing about photographs and memories - so a perfect time to take a break with some photographs and memories. It's -13 degrees Celsius (that's 55 Fahrenheit) outside

Paris, Avenue du Maine

London

Tampere

The second roll of film from my little Dirkon looks like winter. My days have been flimsy and underexposed, but today I finally woke up to the glittery miracle that is the holiday season! It is somehow amazing that in the middle of solemn woes and days that are too short, such things exist as scented candles, mulled wine promotion campaigns and corny window displays.

It makes me want to play the piano all day, look at weather reports and start reading Little Women again.

I spent a cold December weekend in my hometown Jyväskylä, in Central Finland. The city that seemed so obnoxious five years ago is beginning to look tolerable and even interesting at times. I'm from the outskirts, the archipelago. Things haven't changed that much there, but then again, it's very different from an almost outsider perspective.

During the weekend I read some small local newspapers, and learnt that, in the 1940's, there used to be a prison camp near where I went to school. Two Russian prisoners tried to escape and were shot in the "magical" foresty hill we wrote stories about in school. I never really thought that these places had anyone else's history but mine.

 

Today is the Finnish Independece Day. It's a solemn, ceremonial day when the media is full of talk of war veterans, the (vague) Finnish identity, of how Finland is a great place to live, but we should still remember the underprivileged. I'm not very patriotic but plan on tuning in on the Presidential Palace gala broadcast later this evening. Hours of shaking hands has never been so interesting.