One of my earliest memories is cleaning house with my mother on New Year’s Eve day. Mom has always said that whatever condition your house is in at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, that is what it will be like for the entire year.
I remember frantically changing linens, dusting knickknacks, washing dishes, dust mopping the hardwood floors and so on, in hopes that the thorough cleaning would last the entire year. Or at least that it would be easily maintained through the year. It never seemed to work.
No matter how nicely cleaned and organized we were on New Year’s Eve, the house would eventually become cluttered and dusty again.
I remember the annual ritual through all my growing up years and I carried it with me to all the places where Chuck and I lived. It wasn’t hard to clean my house the first few years of marriage. We didn’t have children or pets, so when the floors were mopped and the counters cleaned off, they stayed that way for a little while.
Now that I look back at those days, I’m sure I annoyed my friends with kids. As they swept four times a day around toys strewn about the house and struggled to keep up with dishes and so forth, I worried about whether my house plants were lined up nicely on the window sill or that my coffee table magazines were arranged neatly.
Keeping my house clean leading up to New Year’s Eve wasn’t too hard. But then two little boys and dogs came along and for many years I was lucky to keep one plant alive on the window sill and I never had time to read a magazine. Unread magazines were tossed in unorganized piles on undusted coffee tables.
But I still followed the ritual. I always tried to start a few days before New Year’s Eve with cleaning, but with the hubbub surrounding Christmas it never happened. I found myself, like my mom, scouring and scrubbing on the last day of the year.
I remember recruiting, through coaxing and coercion, Chuck and my sons. Some years were more successful than others. If I wanted to meet my goal of a semi-clean home, I found that bribery worked best on the boys.
You want some money for those expensive tennis shoes? That Starter jacket? You want to go see Batman Returns or Lethal Weapon? You want a ride to the skatepark? How about you fold three loads of laundry or scrub the kitchen floor or wash a few windows or clean your room?
I’m not necessarily proud of being so devious, but it worked. I had a reasonably clean house most of the time through these loan shark-like techniques.
I would kick it into high gear as New Year approached, in hopes that I would achieve the ever-elusive clean house. The tradition that was handed down to my mom by her mom lives on.
However, this year, as my mom and I took part in a newer holiday tradition—Julefest at Bethlehem Lutheran Church—we were both aghast when we learned that we’ve had the annual housecleaning ritual wrong.
We enjoyed all the Scandinavian treats and listened as Pastor Mark Ditmanson shared the sweet story of St. Lucia, describing how the young Swedish woman brought light to her starving countrymen and how her good deeds are commemorated in Scandinavian homes every year on St. Lucia Day, December 13.
Mom and I have attended Julefest at Bethlehem Lutheran Church for several years. It is a lovely event, a wonderful celebration of light and kindness in the dark of winter. But this year as Pastor Mark talked about St. Lucia Day, he shared a fact that we hadn’t heard before.
According to tradition, Pastor Mark said, the family must clean the house from top to bottom, to make it spotless, before the special day because the condition of the house on December 13—St. Lucia Day—was to be the condition of the home for the year ahead.
Mom looked at me in shock and as soon as the St. Lucia program was over, we turned to one another and exclaimed, “That explains it!”
The ancestors who passed on the clean-your-house-before- New-Year’s-Eve tradition were Swedish, but something must have been lost in translation. No wonder we’ve been so housekeeping challenged!
Too late to do anything about it this year. But next year, on December 12, you know where I’ll be. Can I bribe anyone to come join me in a holiday house cleaning party?
I hate housework. You make the beds, you wash the dishes and six months later you have to start all over again.
Joan Rivers
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