Christmas Eve 2019 - Kalle Anke

Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Settled in for Kalle Anke at around 2:15 which is a little earlier than usual. 

I put in a DVD called Disney's Merry Christmas Songs which is a sing-a-long. I used to show it to the kids at a school a worked at a number of years ago. Great fun and lots of memories.

Didn't finish the DVD before heading to the Christmas Eve service but we watched some more of it afterward and before heading over to Mom's for fondue. 

There's been some concern in recent years that the tradition in Sweden may eventually go away as younger folks are used to on-demand watching due to DVDs and now streaming. It's my understanding that viewership, once at a height of around 50 percent of the population, has dipped to "only" a third of the population. However, home video has been around since the early 1980s and the tradition is still strong. I read that as recently as 2016 cell phone use dropped 28 percent and calls to emergency services fell 16 percent during the broadcast of the show. 

I find that my own version of Kalle Anke on the 24th provides a nice transition from the more secular aspects of the season to the more religious. 

Click on the link below for an article from Slate magazine on Kalle Anke.

https://slate.com/culture/2009/12/sweden-s-bizarre-tradition-of-watching-donald-duck-kalle-anka-cartoons-on-christmas-eve.html