Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.12.2014, Qupperneq 56

T H E R E Y K J A V Í K G R A P E V I N E X M A S S P E C I A L4
Christmas was—and remains—mer-
chants’ time to shine. Christmas can
make or break a shop's existence. To-
day, record sales are next to nothing
compared to book sales, but in the
'70s—and the '80s and '90s—the sea-
son was categorized as either a “Book
Christmas” or “Record Christmas,”
depending on which medium sold in
greater numbers that year. “Will this
Christmas be a 'Book Christmas' or a
'Record Christmas',” newspaper ar-
ticles would earnestly ponder.
I never got any records for Christ-
mas; for me, it was always Book
Christmas. The Tintin books were
coming out in Icelandic translation
at the time, and I would get the latest
one every year. Tintin books are really
the only thing I remember getting for
Christmas as a child. I guess I did re-
ceive clothes and some toys, but I just
can't remember anything about it. I
do remember that my brother-in-law
Jón once promised to give me a book
that he was sure “young boys like you”
would love. It was a thriller by either
Sven Hassel or Alistair MacLean—two
authors who were extremely popular
at the time. Of course, I didn’t even
read it, because I wasn't the kind of
boy that my brother-in-law took me
for. For me, everything was all about
music since I was aged eleven or so,
and learned to strum my first guitar
chords.
The only time I was nice to my
grandmother
My grandmother Guðrún would come
from the gruesome retirement home
Grund to spend the holidays with us.
We sometimes went to visit her art the
old folks’ home. Out of all those visits,
I only remember one, because I got a
new type of ice cream from Kjörís, a
small white plastic ball with vanilla ice
cream inside. My grandmother was al-
ways going to the toilet while we were
visiting her. Having a piss was prob-
ably the most fun she had, and her toi-
let business was what she talked most
about. I guess I can say that I found her
quite boring. In all of my memories of
her she is tense and anxious. If I was
late to return home, she would be look-
ing out the window when I came back.
When I went out she would force me
to wear thick gloves and woollen hats.
She was 82 when she
died, on New Year's
Eve of 1980. She
was back at the old
people's home when
death got her. In my
diary I wrote: "Grand-
mother Guðrún Lára
dies. Perfectly normal
New Year's Eve."
I should have been
nicer to my grand-
mother. I was always
kind of grouchy to-
wards her. Only once,
that I can remember,
was I nice to her.
That's when I played
"Silent Night" for her
on my guitar. The old
people's home Grund
was a pretty horrid
place (and still is?).
Especially “The final
ward” that my grand-
mother spent her fi-
nal days at. I remember all the old peo-
ple sitting in silence, staring vacantly
at nothing.
Commercial Christmas
The weeks before Christmas are a
thrilling time for a kid. They’re prob-
ably better than Christmas itself. In
the '70s, the mechanized Santa in
the Rammagerðin storefront was the
first public sign of Christmas. His ap-
pearance announced that Christmas
was formally on. TV commercials got
people into the right mindset. The
most Christmas-y ad was for Coca
Cola, where young people of all races
belted out The New Seekers' “I'd Like
To Teach The World To Sing” with
Coke in their hands on top of a hill. To
this day, many of my generation can’t
get into the Christmas groove until
they’ve seen this ad.
Cookies of all sorts were baked. The
"air cookie" was my favourite. Fruit
also play a role in Icelandic Christmas
tradition. Clementines were eaten in
large quantities (as they are today),
and older people told stories of the red
apples they got to have for Christmas
in their youth—only half an apple per
person or something, as apples were
such rarities back in the '40s and '50s.
The patriarchy’s stranglehold
The day of Christmas Eve is when
Christmas officially begins in Iceland,
at precisely six o'clock. Every home
would blare the National Radio broad-
cast loudly. At six, after church bells
had been chiming for some time, a live
broadcast from Mass would start, and
the family began stuffing itself with
food while the Christmas gospel went
on in the back.
In my family, the
dinner would always
start with asparagus
soup. Tinned aspara-
gus was not so com-
mon at the time, so
my dad would use his
connections to score
a tin of Green Giant
asparagus from some
guy who worked at
an import company.
The main course was
a lamb or a pig, and
for dessert we would
have something funky
like a sherry "from-
age." Something was
lost in the translation
from French (from-
age means cheese in
French) to Icelandic
(frómas means parfait
in Icelandic).
The patriarchy
had a stranglehold
on my family. The women ALWAYS
washed the dishes while the men lay
down, usually unbuttoning their shirts
after all the gluttony. Nobody could
open a present until the dishes were
clean, but sometimes the cat had man-
aged to rip his one open, as it always
contained a bag of foul-smelling dried
fish.
We fear change
For me, Christmas means revisiting
old times, chilling and eating so much
that you must unbutton. That Nói
Síríus assorted chocolates rush is also
a vital part of the feast. In my opinion,
Christmas should be an old-fashioned
and well-versed routine. All the deco-
rations should be old and corny. The
older and cornier, the better. They
should have been part of the family for
decades. That plastic Santa that you
forget about for 11/12th of the year is a
well of good memories. You remember
when you as a kid dragged his trou-
sers down to reveal a flat black plastic
groin. My '70s Christmas tree was fake
and tiny, and sometimes it was covered
with webs of "angel-hair."
I hate "modern" Christmas decora-
tions. During the bubble years, a few
idiots even decked their halls and trees
with “tasteful” shiny black ornaments
and shit. Even black Christmas trees.
What dismal stupidity! Jesus Christ
is surely rolling in his grave over such
Christmas blasphemy.
The family bought a Grundig console cabinet stereo in 1976. I
know what year it was because I remember the LPs that came
with it: ‘Horft í roðann’, the debut solo album by Stuðmenn's Ja-
kob Frímann Magnússon, and ‘Einu sinni var’, wherein beloved
poems and verses from the ‘Vísnabók’ (“The Rhyme-book”—a
popular tome of traditional Icelandic children’s poems) were
translated into pop hits by genius of the craft Gunnar Þórðar-
son and superstar singer Björgvin Halldórsson. ‘Horft í roðann’
contained a smash hit, “Röndótta mær” (“Striped maid”), which
justified its invitation into our household, while ‘Einu sinni var’
went on to become Iceland’s best-selling album ever, shifting
more than 20,000 units before Christmas of 1976 alone—an un-
heard-of number at the time.
Christmas In The '70s—
A Remembrance
WORDS BY DR. GUNNI
PHOTOS PROVIDED BY DR. GUNNI
I should have been nic-
er to my grandmother.
I was always kind of
grouchy towards her.
Only once, that I can
remember, was I nice
to her. That's when I
played "Silent Night"
for her on my guitar.
Musician, writer, pop music scholar and nostalgicist Dr. Gunni
(born 1965) pays a visit to The Ghost of Christmas Past