“Now it’s Christmas again… and Christmas lasts through to Easter”

This is my nineteenth Christmas in Denmark, so the Danish Christmas traditions no longer trouble, discomfit, or surprise me. They’re the traditions my own children have grown up with; I’ve not only metabolized Danish Christmas internally, but helped advance it forward to a new generation. And yet it was never my intention to raise my…

Lys i Mørket

Do you know how Chicago was founded? It was a bunch of New Yorkers who said, “You know, I love the crowds and pollution and crime and filth and high prices here in New York, but dammit, the winters just aren’t cold enough…” That’s one of two classic Chicago jokes I know. (I’ll get to…