Jean Burden writes, “it is a wood to be gone through at night/ with no road to follow, /with no light,” such is life in a way. Patrick Kurp reflects on this, a kind of contrast to the light of Christmas.

I hope your Christmas was good. Mine was unusual, at least for me. I spent it with the young Norwegian relative I wrote of before, along with his mother, who came to America to be with him for the holiday. I took them to dinner on Friday evening. On Saturday afternoon we joined the family of one of my dad’s cousins, not too far from here, at one of their children’s homes. They have a very large family, so it was a rather different celebration than my less-fecund branch of the Walkers enjoys. But it was very nice, and everyone said they were glad we came. My lefse and pumpkin pie were received with appreciation.

On Sunday we went down to Kenyon, the old family seat, and we showed them the cemetery (where most of the Walkers in Kenyon are now to be found), our church (both the present one and the old stone one in the country), and the farm where my great-grandfather settled in 1915, after moving from Iowa. We also took them to the local nursing home, where they met Aunt Ordella, that great-grandfather’s sole surviving child. She’s 101.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but meeting Aunt Ordella seemed to be the high point of the visit for the Norwegians. If I understand their comments correctly, they don’t see Ordella as only our oldest relation, but their own oldest relation too. They came to Minnesota in part to touch the lives of their grandparents and great-grandparents.

My branch of the Walkers will meet this weekend. Last weekend was impossible due to scheduling, and this way we can save money by buying presents in after-Christmas sales. At least that’s my strategy.

“Father Damien was a priest who became famous for his willingness to serve lepers.” Trevin Wax quotes a Christmas meditation from the life of a man willing to live close to lepers.

Also via Mr. Wax, Alan Jacobs’ essay, “Christianity and the Future of the Book.” If Christians are people of the book, how would we change if “the book” as we know it disappears? “This interweaving of technology and theology is extremely complex, and the arrows of causation run in both directions.* Christians adopted the codex before other groups — Jewish and pagan alike — for serious theological reasons…”

The devastatingly handsome figure you see above is a piece of lefse. I’m also in the picture, in the maroon sweatshirt. Last night I joined my friend in St. Paul, making lefse at his house for the second year in a row. I know how excited you already are about this, but this year it’s better because we have pictures!

This is what lefse looks like when it’s finished. My friend says it’s the best batch of lefse he’s ever made in his life (and he’s made a lot). On the basis of my own on-site research, I can’t dispute that.

Below, after the fold, a Christmas song from Sissel Kyrkjebø: Continue reading The best of Norwegian Christmas tradition →

Ancient Faith Radio and Dr. Chrissi Hart have produced a 101 podcast version of The Chronicles of Narnia. Ancient Faith Radio uses online audio to build the faith of Orthodox Christians.

Boekhandel Selexyz Dominicanen in Maastricht, The Netherlands, opened for Christmas five years ago inside a former Dominican cathedral. See the beautiful photos. I hope they have a good church history section. (First seen here)

Well, once again Time Magazine has passed me over for Person of the Year. Instead they chose somebody called “The Protester.”

I protest.

In other news, I was floored by this article from Psychology Today (tip: Conservative Grapevine). In it, psychologists Allan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa come right out and say a number of things we’ve all known all the time, but nobody in the public eye has had the nerve to say out loud. Like, gentlemen prefer blondes. And most suicide bombers are Muslims. And it isn’t sexism that leads to sexual harrassment in the workplace.

Human behavior is a product both of our innate human nature and of our individual experience and environment. In this article, however, we emphasize biological influences on human behavior, because most social scientists explain human behavior as if evolution stops at the neck and as if our behavior is a product almost entirely of environment and socialization. In contrast, evolutionary psychologists see human nature as a collection of psychological adaptations that often operate beneath conscious thinking to solve problems of survival and reproduction by predisposing us to think or feel in certain ways. Our preference for sweets and fats is an evolved psychological mechanism. We do not consciously choose to like sweets and fats; they just taste good to us.

The authors operate from an evolutionary point of view, but in general a Christian can accept all these statements, it seems to me, on the basis of our belief in original sin.

“The Thin Red Line,” by Robert Gibb. These doughty Scots Highlanders were certainly descended in part from Vikings.

A couple links today. Both from the Archaeology in Europe blog, in which I’ve found much of interest over the years.

First, an article from the BBC on the ties between Scotland and Scandinavia. As Scotland considers possible independence, some are looking to the traditional ties between themselves and (especially) the Norwegians.

An oft-repeated tale has Jo Grimond, former Liberal MP for Orkney and Shetland, being asked to give the name of his nearest rail station on a parliamentary expenses form, and writing “Bergen, Norway”.

Also an article from ScienceNordic (also linked by Grim of Grim’s Hall) on current research into the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder on Medieval knights. As Grim notes, there’s some nonsense here, but it also has much of interest. The subject of PTSD interests me increasingly, for reasons I won’t bore you with.

De Charny also suggested what the knights should do to resist the stress factors. He said knights should fight for a good cause to avoid succumbing to the pressures of war. A ‘good cause’ should be God’s cause – a war for a higher and just cause, to reinstate law and order – and not for personal gain.

Book geeks wanting to eat the food described in their favorite fantasy novels are making dishes of raccoon, nettle soup, and grilled rattlesnake. You know, food and eating are things I want to include in my stories, but I should shutup about that until I get several thousand words into them.