Have a lutefisk

As the Midwest lights up like a whorehouse on a Saturday night, with garish displays of holiday lights and inflatable Santas crammed on to front lawns the size of postage stamps, I am reminded of the Scandinavian Christmases that my family used to celebrate when I was a child.

I think the best way to describe them is the opening scene of Ingmar Bergman’s “Fanny and Alexander,” when the Ekdahl family gathers in an unnamed Swedish village to celebrate Christmas Eve in 1905. I know that Ingmar Bergman’s films are dark and dreary and Swedish, with prevailing themes of father-God struggles, but as soon as Bergman’s characters start breaking out the hardtack, I’m laughing myself silly. I grew up on the high-fiber goodness of hardtack, or what you civilians call Wasa bread. My grandparents ate it all the time, usually smothered with herring or a stick of butter. Maybe Bergman meant his films to be comedies and only Swedes get the yoke?

In the movie, Fanny and Alexander are eagerly awaiting the arrival of their philandering, larger-than-life, adventurer uncle, Gustav. The kids in the family fall upon Uncle Gustav who takes them into another room after a traditional Scandinavian Christmas supper of hardtack and lutefish, and performs a parlor trick by farting gas on to a candle flame that explodes like a blow torch. The kids make him do it over and over, until Uncle Gustav’s wife walks in and makes him stop. Then the adults in the movie get drunk on glug and the family joins hands, dancing from room to room accompanied by jolly accordion music. The rest of the film goes downhill from here, with only occasional comic relief provided by more eating of hardtack.

That’s pretty much my early childhood Christmases in a nutshell. As a second generation Swedish-American, I am the recipient of many hackneyed Scandinavian holiday customs passed down to me by my Swedish grandparents.

Our house always smelled like a Port-o-Pottie at Taste of Chicago around the holidays as my relatives consumed large amounts of lutefisk, a cod fish fermented in lye. Another holiday custom of the Swedes is to make Santa Clause into most horrible, hideous monster imaginable. This was no genial, Clay-mation Santa like on “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” During my years as a believer, Santa angrily rang our doorbell on Christmas Eve and dumped our presents in the snow; prodded me awake out of a deep sleep by standing over my bed; or burst into a room scaring the shit of us until you didn’t even want to go near the motherfucker, let alone dance around the Christmas tree with him while some old Swede played “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” on the accordion.

When my niece was three, my sister-in-law and I took to her to breakfast with Santa on a Viking ship held in the basement of the Swedish-American Museum in Andersonville. The kids were happily playing beneath the bows of the Viking ship, until Santa stuck his head through a porthole and started screaming at them. My niece became hysterical, and I was overcome with having scary Santa flashbacks. My sister-in-law, who grew up believing that Santa lived in the toy department at Marshall Field’s, was unaware of the Santa-is-a-serial killer Scandinavian tradition. We took her upstairs and tried to calm her down, but she refused to return to the party and socialize with Santa. She did make me go back downstairs and get the free gift that Santa was passing out.

In Sweden, Santa is actually a pagan pixie that lives in a meteor crater in the Lapland called “Jul Tomte.” There are hundreds of “tomte gubins” as my mother used to call them, living near villages throughout Sweden, hiding underground or deep in the forests. Jul Tomte is the enthroned pixie, sort of like Prince Charles. On Christmas Eve, Jul Tomte and/or his helpers arrive in towns riding on goats or the “Jul bock” delivering baskets of presents and other goodies. They knock on doors of houses and ask, “Finns det några snälla barn här?" or “Are there any good children living here?”

The tomtems love porridge and tobacco. That’s pretty much what they sustain on. They have wars with the trolls which they always lose, because a thousand tomtems ran through the weeds, chased by one Norwegian. The trolls kill them but the tomtems keep replenishing themselves, because they are a fertile people, and clean.

In the Lapp, Christmas Eve is the scariest night of the year because of Stallo, the furry evil twin brother of the Jul Tomte. Stallo, which means “metal man,” is often dressed as an ancient astronaut or robot, harkening back to the metal armor worn by the Vikings. Stallo delights in genital mutilation of his innocent victims. He will poke his staff up the skirts of young girls. On Christmas Eve, he rides around on a sleigh pulled by lemmings – Jesus’ punishment to the idolatrous Swedes – looking for something to drink. He will sink his stake into the ground near a fresh water supply and if he doesn’t find water, he’ll bash in the head of a child and drink its blood.

According to a Lapp legend, three brothers decided to play games instead of going to church on Christmas Eve. They wanted to have some fun by gutting a reindeer, but as none were to be found, the youngest brother volunteered instead. After the boy was slaughtered and disemboweled, and the sparkling white snow splattered with blood, the two remaining brothers began to cook his flesh.

Smelling the savory aroma of roasting human flesh, Stallo leaped into action, killing one boy instantly. The other brother tried to escape. He hid in a locked chest but Stallo blew red-hot embers through the keyhole, burning the child alive.

The old Swedes enjoyed hazing us at Christmas, just as they were hazed by their own parents and grandparents growing up in smelly houses in Sweden, hearing magical Christmas tales of genital mutilation. The rest of the year, we just played bunko and drank coffee – even the 4-year-olds.