The Twelve Days of Christmas are over. Most of us probably have our trees down (except me…), but let's get in our Christmas time machine. All of Iceland goes all out with their Christmas decorations, but not in a tacky, over-the-top way. More like in a sparkly-magical-wonderland kind of way. There were live trees on the sidewalks of Reykjavik, whimsically decorated the shop windows, and a postbox to send a letter to "the Icelandic Santa." And I do believe I discovered where Anthropologie gets some of its ideas!
(I do apologize that some of these photos are blurry. The limited and dim daylight was a pain in the hiney sometimes!)
The Christmas Goat outside IKEA. It is held down with construction equipment, and managed to escape fire this year!
Milk, Christmas Milk to be specific. Do you know what makes it different from regular milk? Not a thing. But there are Christmas Lads on each carton, which surely must make it taste more festive!
I loved this window. Little shreds of gold leaf suspended on monofilament strung from the top of the window to the bottom.
I hate that this picture turned out blurry. The fairy lights in the branches and the trees were so, so pretty. Let's just pretend I was going for a bokeh effect. Yeah, that's the ticket!
The day that the Christmas tree was supposed to be lit, a huge wind storm came through. It was the most incredible wind I have ever been in. So it canceled the tree lighting — and it took broke the tree (a gift from Norway, as it has been for the past 50 years) in half. (There are not many trees in Iceland, let alone enough to supply a giant national tree every year.) After breakfast we saw the crane taking it down.
So the next day, the mayor of Reykjavik cut down a tree somewhere, and we had to watch the tree lighting on the Internet from home.
I hope a look back at these vignettes of Reykjavik at Christmastime have made your day a little more sparkly! I guess I can take the tree down now.
