Astrid Lindgren’s memorable narrator, nine-year-old Lisa, in The Children of Noisy Village, conveys the childlike security of traditions. Lisa explains that Christmas begins on the day she and her brothers bake ginger snaps. She has confidence that this event has occurred several times before and betrays no fear that there will ever come a time when this will not be the case.
Lisa continues, “When we had almost finished baking we put all our last little pieces of dough together and made a big prize cooky. We always do this. Then in the afternoon, when all the ginger snaps had come out of the oven, we put dried peas in a bottle and went around all over Noisy Village to let everyone guess how many peas there were. The one who made the closest guess would get the big cooky for a prize.”
The specificity of the events and assurance that they will happen again are the rudimentary requirements of a tradition. The Children of Noisy Village is a plot-less narrative, bringing the reader into an unchanging cast of characters and predictable pattern of events. Even as new events occur, like staying up for the New Year for the first time, this is not seen as a departure from the way things have always been but rather establishing a tradition that will always be.
Certainly, some of the characters in and around Noisy Village are not amused by the daily activity and traditions that the children relish. The shoemaker in a crank and there is little evidence that the spinster neighbor Karin is smitten with the annual delivery of Christmas cheer from the children. Nevertheless, everyone knows what to expect and is part of the cohesive narrative of the community.
Perhaps what makes Lindgren’s story world so believable, as so often is the case, is that she based Lisa’s neighborhood on the real world and her father’s childhood. Lindgren’s father, Samuel August Ericsson, just like Lisa, grew up in “Middle Farm” in between two other farms where the children played and lived their lives together.
Lindgren’s ability to recapture the unsullied excitement of a child getting out of school for the year and celebrating Christmas again is what makes the Noisy Village books so enchanting for children and adults alike. Particularly with respect to the turning of the seasons, the book offers a refreshing view of what the point of it all is: wonder.
The child becomes aware of the world with a sense that order has always existed. While the adult can become bewildered in the bustle of the year turning yet again, to the child exposed to the most modest rhythms of life, the seasons change with seemingly inevitable signposts. There is a way that things “always” take place.
Recent years find many people bemoaning that they are “told” how to feel on holidays. Why do they “have” to be thankful on Thanksgiving? Why do we “have” to stop celebrating on January 3? (news flash: you don’t! You haven’t even made it through the twelve days of Christmas at that point!). These gripes miss something important: we should be in a holiday spirit always. The collective celebrating and reenactment of tradition is for the benefit of us all as we strive to experience the eternal in the midst of the mundane. You may not live in a quaint Swedish farming village, but you can still create the stability and splendor of annual traditions. Especially as the adult behind the magic you may not feel particularly grateful or joyful, but that is an indication of needing the sustenance of the holiday all the more, not less.
Today, you can visit a model of Noisy Village and listen to sound recordings from the movie version there. We must, however, guard against turning edifying traditions into a nostalgic escape. Whether then or now, eternity remains unchanged, and our ability to experience it, only as a glimpse and as a foreshadowing, remains real.
Lisa’s delight and certainty that each tradition has always been is the joy of innocence possible for any child given the time and space to be a child. And it is an experience not limited to the very young. In the character of Grandfather, Lindgren shows how a man who has led a difficult life finds tranquility in a family home during his twilight years. Those in the middle—most of us rushing about trying to take care of everything—are the ones so often blind to these wonders. But hope springs eternal, and we can believe that we will learn to see again.
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