Christmas 2022

This is just a photo story of my Christmas 2022. I am not quite sure when my Christmas started, but it always ends on 13 January, on St. Knut’s Day (as it traditionally ended in Finland). Nowadays it ends officially on 6 January. Anyway, it’s time to show how my Christmassy flat and how one red/pink-haired character has occupied my home, too.

Today, on the 13th of January, St. Knut’s Day, I will take down those Christmas decorations that can be seen outside of my flat, meaning the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer window light decoration and the Christmas door decoration. But I will keep the rest for a little longer. I like Christmas decorations.

I have published three years ago on my blog some photos about my flat during the Christmas time. (Check here.) There are some nice pictures there, but the theme of the story was not about the decorations and photos of them. This time the main thing is the pictures, but unfortunately the quality is not as good as last time. I don’t know why. I used tripod to get nice shots, but nothing helped. Anyway, these are just photos of my flat during the Christmas time in 2022 (plus one extra shot from 2021). Some of them are real photographs, then there are lots of shots that I took with my cheap tablet (I don’t even call them “real” photos).

Usually I decorate the whole flat at least a bit, but this year I skipped my bedroom totally and I never finished with the study, either. But my living room is in its Christmas costume and my kitchen, too. If someone visits me, these are the rooms they see. This Christmas I had one visitor, an old school mate of mine. And another friend took me an annual Christmas flower. So beautiful:

Otherwise I have spent the Christmas with my loyal friend, ℎ𝑖𝑑𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐷𝑜𝑙𝑙, who was very interested in the peppemint-flavoured polkagris candies that I  had bought already in November. This year I started my Xmas decorations earlier than normally.

Yes, I started my Xmas preparations early this year. But even though I started very, very early, I only finished with two rooms as I mentioned. This year I also baked the ginger bread cookies very early unlike last year when I did it two days before Christmas Eve! Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures this year, but as baking the ginger bread cookies is an essential part of Christmas preparations, I borrow a photo from last year (the green and red plastic cookie cutters are from my childhood):

hide the Doll supervising my Christmas preparations in 2021.

And then it’s Christmas Eve and time for dinner. Below you can see my Christmas Eve dinner company.

I tried to make a larger image using my real camera, but it was too dark and the result is quite poor, as you can see:

And then a dessert that was a traditional Christmas dish, a kissel made of dried fruits:

In Finland the Christmas presents are given on Christmas Eve. One lady whom I got to know about four decades ago sent me Christmas presents. We are wondering, what there might be in the parcels…

ℎ𝑖𝑑𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐷𝑜𝑙𝑙 would have whatever there is in the first parcel that I open, and I would have the content of the second one. I opened the first parcel and there was a nice and handy London-themed bag. So that’s ℎ𝑖𝑑𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐷𝑜𝑙𝑙’s present. I guess he won’t mind if I borrow it every now and again. I found lovely woolen socks from the second parcel. I was happy. The size was perfect (they would have anyway been too big for ℎ𝑖𝑑𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐷𝑜𝑙𝑙). The third present was a little book.

I received some Christmas cards, too. I am a bit old-fashioned; I love to send Christmas cards or Christmas letters and I love to receive them. A big part of my “Christmas correspondence” is inherited from my parents, meaning that I am writing cards to those people that my parents (mother in the latter days) were sending cards to, and I am receiving cards from those people who used to send cards to my parents.

I was hoping that I would have had time for relax during the Xmas time, but I had gathered a bit too much work, so basically I worked whole Christmas. My Christmas was quite different anyway, as first time (if I don’t count the Christmas 2014 when I escaped the whole Christmas to St. Petersburg as it would have been my first Christmas on my own) I skipped the visit to the graves. The reason was simple: the streets were so icy that I decided not to take a risk to break my bones.

The only other activity besides working on my stuff was to take pictures of my flat. I have done that on a couple of Christmases and I have a nice collection of pictures that shows my flat with the Christmas decorations. I have never had a Christmas tree. There is no space for it. It would be nice as I have lovely old Christmas tree decorations, but there is no enough space for it. And maybe I am also too lazy to get one. It’s a nice thing to have, but then you have to get rid of it after the festive season.

Before I show how my living room looked this Christmas (and will look for a couple of more weeks, I guess), here is one picture from the kitchen. There is still one polkagris candy left!

There is still one polkagris candy left on 10 January when I took this photo!

The next photos are just photos of the living room Christmas decoration. The first one is taken on 3 January. It was a sunny day, so I tried if I could make a nice photo with the tablet.

The doorway to my bedroom.

The one below is taken on Christmas Eve with my real camera.

Then some close ups of stuff that are seen on the shot above:

Another view:

I sometimes change things inside the display cabinet, but certain things stay and even some Christmas stuff ends up in the same place every year, like the old Christmas elf that sits every year on the same spot. This year’s photo is not very good if I compare it with some shots I have taken earlier of it. You can find one shot in my other blog story that I published three years ago. Click this to see the better photo.

And if you click this, you see that the old snowman candle that I got when I was a child, is also in the cabinet every Christmas. Below is the photo from this Christmas.

There is Christmas in every corner (if you can see anything in that murky pic):

It seems that this guy has enjoyed his Christmas a little bit too much…

The living room was this year the only place (together with a kitchen) where I had put the decorations up. Usually I have a little more Christmassy stuff in my study, too (I have the Christmas lights there all year round), but this year I just put Xmas table cloths on one table and on a low bookshelf under the poster wall…

… and there are also these partying Christmas elves in my study:

But the Christmas lights are there always giving lights on dark times of the years and in the evenings (I hardly ever use ceiling lamps):

When doing this today, on the last day of Christmas, I checked my Christmas photos from the past Christmases (I started photographing my flat with Christmas decorations since I moved here) and there are lots of much nicer pictures than the ones above. Maybe I will do another story in the end of the year showing my favourite shots. However, I wonder, if anyone is interested in watching photos of my home… But I enjoy doing this and that’s what matters.

Before I close this blog post, here is the official Christmas portrait of my loyal company, ℎ𝑖𝑑𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐷𝑜𝑙𝑙:

Photos and text © Katriina Etholén