As I write, Christmas looms, and the perennial questions pop up. In the Winter-Honeyman household, it starts with, “Is this an ‘in’ or an ‘out’ year?” ‘In’ years means at home on the farm with the relative peace of your own surroundings. Whereas an ‘out’ year is overseas, frequently starting in Norway, meaning long flights, long nights, arctic cold, and the traditional five days of a Viking-style celebration commencing with a festive meal of reconstituted mutton, desiccated after burial the previous February. This delicacy, pinnekjøtt, is dug up, boiled for several hours then served with swedes washed down with pure spirit aquavit.
That liquid must travel around the globe in special oak hogsheads in the preceding year, passing the equator twice before being decanted and consumed. Think smoky rocket fuel meets tequila and you get the picture. And, a word to the wise — the toast in Norway sounds like ‘scull’. Otago graduates will be familiar with that challenge and the inevitable downing of a frothy beverage.
My son, James, at his first meet the in-law’s night, when toasted with a resounding ‘skål’ knocked back a full glass of aquavit thinking this was respectful. He also thought the shouts of glee from younger in-laws was friendly Viking encouragement. So, he kept up with tradition as one by one the room offered him a ‘skål’. That was until he caught a glint in the Norwegian matriarch’s eye as she delicately sipped her drink to dissolve a mouthful of mutton and swede! A family legend he became as he was carried to bed. So, for those of you fortunate enough to visit Oslo, the lesson is ‘skål’ but don’t scull!
Christmas 2020 was to be an ‘in’ year. Around 14 December they would start arriving at home. Parents and grandchildren from overseas. Like Odin and Solveig in the picture above. The seasonal madness would begin. But what pure joy! As with many of you, this ruddy pandemic has changed all that. The troops will be greatly missed. But hey, celebrate we must! Especially 2020, as we hope for better things to come.
The Irish poet Seamus Heaney wrote about hope in The Cure at Troy. It was spring of 1990 and he was at Harvard — this was a low ebb for him. He had little hope for progress in the troubles of Northern Ireland. However, he saw signs of change elsewhere: the fall of the Berlin Wall, in November 1989, the election of Václav Havel as president of Czechoslovakia that December, the end of the Ceausescu regime in Romania, and, in February 1990, the release of Nelson Mandela after 27 years in prison. And so, his verse speaks of a “tidal wave of justice.”
The poem is a touchstone for the president-elect, Biden. The resonance of these words could hardly be overstated as he speaks to unite and inspire an America worn out and fractured by democracy and disease:
"History says, don’t hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up.”
For us in Aotearoa, with such hard-won hope for better times ahead, we have much to be thankful for. So, from my family to yours. Noho mai ra i roto i nga manaakitanga katoa.
God jul og et godt nytt år ... Hei, skål!
Gerard Winter
JANZ president