Letter from Copenhagen: Advent has a thoroughly Scandinavian aspect and every day, for the past month, dinning tables across the region have been adorned with advent candles that are lit at most meals and certainly at every dinner.
As they burn, each Advent candle counts down the days from December 1st to December 24th, the day at the centre of Jule, or Christmas, here. At a time of the year when it rarely gets bright beyond a grey pallor, these thousands of flickering lights brighten up homes and apartments no end. Christmas trees have also been popping up at a steady rate - Denmark sells 10 million Christmas trees every year - and many Sundays are spent decorating them with handmade decorations.
But Advent is not all about cosiness and warmth. For the past month, Nisse, small elf-like characters from the mists of Scandinavian sagas, have been on the prowl, causing mischief wherever possible. Nisse have their origins in folklore, stretching back to a time when most Scandinavians worked the land. They are known across the region from Iceland to Norway and have been well documented in songs and sagas for several hundred years.
Small men, and sometimes small women, or Nissekone, Nisse are traditionally dressed from head to foot in red. Legend has it that they lived secluded lives around farm buildings, minding their own business most of the time. Every now and again they even rewarded kind farmers by carrying out small chores around the farm.
However, irk them at your peril. Upset Nisse were capable of running amok and all manner of catastrophes were blamed on them. Nisse were held responsible for spoiling food stores; still-births; the death of livestock, and premature death. In fact, some experts believe the word Nisse may have its origins in the old Norse word of the same spelling, meaning "infection".
To appease them, during Christmas time the Nisse were presented with gifts of the best of the year's grain mixed with butter and topped off with sugar, a valuable commodity in times gone by. Nowadays Risalamande, a traditional Danish desert similar to rice pudding, is substituted.
Both the good and the more mischievous aspects of the Nisse are present during Advent: pranks are played on family members but small gifts turn up for children, either on a daily basis or at least every Sunday. On December 24th, the Nisse leave larger gifts in a culture where Santa Claus, or Juleman, is seen as something of a blow-in from abroad. Each year during Advent a television mini-series depicts the Nisse getting into all sorts of scrapes as they count down to December 24th. It is compulsive viewing for adults and children alike.
The fourth Sunday of advent represents the culmination of the busiest of seasons in Denmark and Scandinavia. At this stage, most non-family Christmas lunches have been negotiated and most people are ready to ease themselves in to the more sedate family-orientated festivities.
Christmas lunches begin at lunch-time and end late the following morning. The main course at these affairs is a variety of raw, marinated herring served on rye bread and washed down with liberal amounts of schnapps.
The schnapps is a key ingredient as it overpowers the taste buds just in time and gets even the most restrained party-goers talking.
However, the Nisse are not the only people who are at their busiest at this time of year. Private detectives in Denmark report that this is their most active season, too. One investigator told a national paper here that Denmark's notorious Christmas party season is peak time for requests to snoop on spouses. "We've got a man out every weekend - we've been busy this year ever since the Christmas season began in late November," he said.
Apparently, the Nisse are not the only ones who are not beyond presenting unusual gifts, either. According to United Minds, a market research company that attempts to predict Christmas gifts every year, plastic surgery gift certificates will be one of the surprises in store for more Danes this year than ever before.
Just imagine handing over a "face-lift" certificate to your mother-in-law on Christmas morning.