Few books in world literature have been so misunderstood as the Bullerby stories. Written by Astrid Lindgren in memory of her own childhood in rural southern Sweden at the time of the First World War, they are now being reinterpreted by a generation that no longer understands the rural reality of the Bullerbü world as a symbol of the green petty bourgeois longing for deceleration.
If you want to know what Bullerbü was really like, you only have to take a curious look at the picture book “Christmas in Bullerbü”. The big Christmas party in the snow-covered mini-village, which consists of the north courtyard, south courtyard and middle courtyard, has to be worked hard for. The children are assigned to fetch wood with the sled. There are no cars here because only rich city dwellers could afford a car and the vehicle wouldn’t be able to get up the mountain in winter anyway. When Ole, exhausted, tries to get out, his mother rebukes him: “We can’t have a lazybones here in the middle of the Christmas preparations. Now everyone has to help.”
The help is sorely needed, because only a few times can be bought in the shop so quickly – at most “meat sausage from the best”, but only if there is enough money.
On the day before Christmas, the seven-year-old storyteller Lisa is very afraid that her mother won’t be able to finish the preparations: “This time it won’t be a real Christmas.” Of course, the father doesn’t laze around either, but earns a living with manual work over the winter an extra income – like many farmers at that time.
Don’t expect any support from grandparents. Because there is only one grandpa. It’s Britta and Inga’s, but he says: “If there aren’t more children than there are here in Bullerbü, then I’ll be enough for everyone.” The background to this funny sentence is a low life expectancy. And those who grew old were often downright exhausted like the almost blind old man. This made them a burden for the younger ones. Because before the welfare state came with its pensions and retirement homes, the elderly had to be cared for by their families at home.
Nevertheless, we prefer to read all this as a hard naturalistic novel from the same milieu. Because Lindgren and her congenial illustrator Ilon Wikland (who, by the way, is still alive) leave the harshness of Bullerby life in the background and put the positive things in the foreground: This includes the family, which for Lindgren is not a problem complex of abuse, violence and psychological terror, but a source of strength. Just like religion, which comes into play discreetly on the sleigh ride in the early, dark morning for Christmas mass.
Above all, however, the book tells of the freedom of children, who are almost always unsupervised. The parent helicopter hadn’t been invented yet. The deep basic trust in people that Lindgren had has become rare and precious today. That’s why “Christmas in Bullerbü” is, despite everything, a utopian work of consolation. And the best Christmas book ever.
