God Bless Us, Everyone...Including Ringo

For us, Christmas comes with established traditions that include stringing lights on a real Christmas tree and having the kids fill the house with joy as we share a marvelous meal together. 



Of course, no Christmas would be complete without  curling up on the sofa with bowl of popcorn and letting our spirits be lifted as Jim Stewart and Donna Reed regale us with a Norman Rockwell-ish Christmas story as we watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” for the millionth time.  Those traditions, however, are on temporary hold as we celebrate Christmas in our new Swedish home here in Stockholm.

Not all is unfamiliar, however!  We had the opportunity to catch a wonderful live performance of Charles Dickens’ 1843 classic, “A Christmas Carol” at the Maxim Theater. We believe this performance “presented in English” is a modern day Stockholm Yuletide tradition. The theater was filled with a cross section of Swedes ranging from clusters of 10 year old boys to gray-haired seniors. English is so widely spoken in Stockholm that an English language theater performance is no barrier to attracting a broad array of Swedes.

The presentation was top-notch and we enjoyed the familiar retelling of Jacob Marley’s warning to Ebenezer Scrooge that three spirits from past, present and future would visit him to propel him to amend his earthly Scrooge-like ways.

We also discovered that we hold a bit of common history with the Maxim Theater, just off Karlaplan in trendy Östermalm.  

As with most of our generation, we clustered around the TV in February 1964 and watched Ed Sullivan, amid screaming and swooning teenagers, introduce the Beatles. Well, a few months before that “really big show” the Beatles played in the very theater in which we sat.

Built in 1945, the theater was originally a radio theater called the Karlaplansstudion.  In October 1963, a new musical group called the Beatles stood on the very stage now occupied by a repentant Scrooge and strummed guitars, pounded drums and shook mop-like hair in a refrain of “Yeah, yeah, yeah” that would become an emblematic common link for a generation that today is closing in on retirement.

The Youtube video below shows the Beatles concert performed in Karlaplansstudion on October 23,1964. We dare you not to sing along!