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Abstract

Blessed Christmas: Tradition and Resistance in Sonja Åkesson’s Christmas Poems
 This article deals with five poems by Sonja Åkesson, all of which feature a Christmas celebration as their common theme, and analyze Christmas through a gendered perspective as well by means of a sharp critique of consumption. The most typical device of Åkesson’s style is the ironic double; when looking at Christmas through her eyes, the reader is provided with a double image. The first two poems are written in the middle of the fifties and are seen through the eyes of a child. The latter three poems, written about ten years later, have the perspective of the house wife. Åkesson criticizes the false pictures of a happy old-fashioned celebration, of the happy child at Christmas, and of the clever house wife bringing Christmas into the house. At the same time, these five poems are characterized by joy and warmth.
 My readings of these poems are contextualized using some of the cultural history surrounding the Christmas holiday. The young Christian church initiated this feast during the 4th century, and intended it as a replacement for three other Roman occasions: two of them orgiastic Dionysian festivals and the third a quiet day of sun worship. The church also planned to strengthen the bonds between parent and child with the help of this new feast. From a cosmological perspective, any family should model the sacred family during Christmas. I argue that this concept is an impossible one. From a gender-studies perspective, the very idea will place a woman and house wife in a very peculiar situation, a fact brilliantly developed through Åkesson’s five poems.