About 35 years coming up, next December 8th to be exact, I boarded the overnight ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki. I got to the docks about 3 and was checked in by 4. Rules were rules and taxes are taxes so while tied up at the dock the ship's bars were at Swedish bar prices ($6 beer in 1984!).
While wondering around I stumbled on a group of Finnish folks who were making "rather merry" and they were, of course, singing Finnish tunes.
I didn't know the words but some of the tunes I knew as they populated the music of Jean Sibelius and this was his birthday and it was a national holiday. Think of that. A musician/composer's birthday being a national holiday. I'll wait a bit in anticipation of Copland day or Bernstein day .... or perhaps a day named after "the Biebs"...green card day.
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| Jean Sibelius, the birthday boy |
I spent the rest of the evening with my new found Finnish friends. About 11pm, give or take, the dining/dancing room, full up with hundreds of Finns with their "hearts on their sleeves" - well it went quiet. The stage band stopped playing and after a few toasts and one old fellow who knew Sibelius giving a speech that roughly translated into "heart and soul", the Silja Lines piped in Sibelius's 5th symphony. It is short, about 30 minutes and in one movement. The government commissioned him to write it in honor of his 50th. When the final measures were reached, the whole room was arm over shoulder, swaying to the music, tears aplenty.
The room dispersed with about 10 minutes to go before midnight, most walking out on the decks, in the ice cold of the Baltic, clearing throats and drying tears. At midnight the stage band started playing traditional music and, given a brisk blast of air and the crying until the eyes were dry, they were ready to party on and remember the wonderful holiday that passed minutes
ago.
I was at a table with a fellow from (then) Ceylon), a Finnish couple living in Argentina, Marjja, a Finnish writer of children's books, and one very stoic Canadian plus a gaggle of other Finns to round it out. Half of us had never seen the likes of the last evening.
Half couldn't wait until next year.