Night fell on Earth

It's nine o'clock in the morning, the sun hasn't yet risen. It's the darkest month of the year here in Finland.
Even though Helsinki is located in the south of the country, there is just a small chance to even see the sun. This because at half-past two in the afternoon the sun will start to set, giving space to a long night.

For an outsider, this might seem like something cool, but I can assure you that there is nothing cool once you start living here, and northern winter starts to be your normality.
To begin with, the simple biology that we need sunlight to live should tell you that surviving in a place where for a long period you won't see the sun, is strongly affecting your mood.
People in winter are less talkative, feel depressed, and constantly tired.
At the moment, we have five hours of light, and no snow to give any sort of joy to our souls. Nature is just dark, damp, and cold.
The sky is covered by a thick curtain of clouds, and it really doesn't make any difference whether it is completely dark or just dark grey.

 

Nevertheless, if you move to the city center, particularly now that we are reaching the Christmas period, the lights and the decorations for the incoming festivity, give a good reason to feel hopeful and improve the general mood.

We are just missing the snow...

Well, the recent years have brought a slight change in the seasonal plan of the Finns, living in Helsinki, and we are not having a decent amount of snow until the second week of January. This means that we need to clench our teeth, brace ourselves, hold onto each other for another month before having two main important things: more light, and more snow.

One important happening, people still follow, is the crowning of Lucy.

One week before the winter solstice, in Finland, there one event historically tied to Swedish culture: the day of St. Lucy. 

St. Lucy is celebrated as a “beacon of brightness” in the darkest time of the year. The first records of St. Lucy's celebrations in Finland are from 1898, and the first large celebrations came in 1930, a couple of years after its popularization in Sweden. Every year, in the Helsinki Cathedral, a girl is going to be crowned.

She bears a crown of candles to fight the darkness, and will walk as a bearer of the light for the streets of Helsinki:

 

She comes to remind us that within one week the days will start once again to get longer, and this means walking toward the spring. You might consider this a bit funny, but in this period, every second added to the length of the day is a great step toward the season when the sun will shine for most of the time.

With my heart full of hope, but still tired as hell, and slightly moody, I wish you all a fantastic weekend!

Fall has arrived, what does it mean?

Well, if we think about Fall in the general idea of the term, it just means the start of a very depressing season, which is winter.
Yet, there is more, and there are as many meanings as there are human beings on this planet. We all have different feelings towards it.
For some people, it means the starting of the spring with blooming colors, the green of the grass, and flowers.
For others, it means getting cozy in front of a fireplace, or wrapped into a warm blanket on the couch reading a book, or watching the snow falling.
What I mean with different meanings, is the memories we carry inside our souls, those that give a real feeling when we simply spell the word fall.
I have had the chance to live the Fall season in three different wonderful countries. Italy, Germany, and Finland. I have been visiting many places, but those meant for me the everyday life for a specified period. Italy for 28 years, Germany for 4 years and Finland for 15 years.
Each place gave me different feelings, and all of them, I am treasuring in my heart.
Italy has the taste of my childhood. Of the times before the Internet, mobile phones, computers. Most of them convey to one single place, or to be precise to one single item, the iron cast wood burning stove of my grandmother.
Every fall, we would have gathered the whole family to help my grandmother to store the wood she ordered to be delivered at home. The truck arrived and unloaded the pile of chopped wood in front of her house. There, we would have spent one whole day to bring them in the wood storage that was on the entrance of her home, a large room placed at the entrance divided from the rest of the house. Since she didn't have any other heating system in her house other than two iron cast stove and another wood burning heater.

That meant a huge amount of chopped wood to be stored for the winter.
Another tradition was roasting the chestnuts on that stove, and that was something that still brings me a broad smile on my face. Our family, when still my grandmother was alive, was almost always gathered in her house.

The years I have spent in Germany meant the starting for the preparation for the Christmas market. Some cities have their traditional Christmas market already in November. Therefore, October was a time when we started thinking about where to go for the Christmas Market.

At that time, I was studying at university. That meant that December I would have spent the time back at home in Italy, and we wouldn't have the time to visit them all, or at least not together.
In Europe, we do not celebrate Halloween. We do have the celebration for all saint's day. This means going to visit the graveyards, (although this is something we do regularly, for that day we bring special flowers and candle lights). Some people go to church in honor of the dead people, but that would be all the celebrations. Some fairs are organized last for the two-three weeks between October and November, but nothing spook-related.
Since I started to live in Finland, Fall means mostly the amazingly beautiful colors with which nature gives a good night, before being immersed in the long darkness of the winter. People get together in the cafeterias waiting for the snow, which gives the impression of more light to shine in our lives.

Finland, like most of the other Nordic countries, waits for winter, only for one reason, winter sports, which includes a lot of snow, hot chocolates, crowded cinemas, getting together with the family, and wait for the Spring.
One day, I hope I will be able to experience my everyday life in the southern hemisphere. There, I will get used to waiting for the Summer in October and for the Winter in June... How crazy that might sound!
I wish you a great weekend and a spooktacular Fall.