Tine Dreams of a Blue Christmas

Tine and Rubob set off in search of the "blånissen" on their walk today -- or at least Tine did.

"The what?" Rubob asked when Tine said something that sounded like she'd sneezed.

"The blånissen," Rubob.

"Bless you, Tine," Rubob said.

"They come out only in the 'blue hour,'" Tine said. "That's what they call it in Norway -- the hour between dusk and darkness. The blånissen are blue elves that live in the mountains. They emerge from their woodland dwellings and paint the landscape blue. They even paint the air blue, if you can imagine that."



This explained why Tine had kept putting off her walk with Rubob earlier in the afternoon.

"Ready for a walk?" Rubob had asked, leafing through his newspaper for the umpteenth time.

"Not yet," Tine had replied, sitting on the couch wearing her blue winter coat.

"Why are you wearing your coat?"

"It's cold, Rubob," Tine had said. Secretly, she'd been eager to get started on her walk. But she'd been waiting all afternoon for the blue hour.

They finally started on their walk at about ten after four.

"I think it's too early to see the blånissen," Tine said, contemplating some white Christmas lights on a tree.



Normally, Tine would have been quite pleased to see the lights, but today she had only blue elves on her mind.

"I have to see the blånissen," she said to Rubob. "Do you remember when we took a walk to the Hill-Stead last January and everything was blue in the fog?"



"No, Tine, I don't recall that," Rubob said.

"How could you have forgotten? Well, anyway, that was the blue hour."



"I didn't know about the blånissen then, so I didn't keep an eye out for them," Tine said. "Maybe we'll see them today -- or tonight, actually. Or sometime between the two, I mean. They only emerge in the blue hour between day and night, and we're too early -- much too early."

"It'll be dark in just a few minutes, Tine," Rubob reassured her. "The sun's setting right now."

"How do you know that?" Tine asked. "Everything looks gray and wintry to me. I haven't seen the sun all day."

"It's the shortest day of the year today, the winter solstice. Wait and see," Rubob said.

"Is it indeed?" Tine said. "The winter solstice. Well, I'll be. They'll be sure to come out for that." But she still looked around her a little doubtfully.

"We won't see the blånissen in this light -- the wretched things," she said. As they turned up Diamond Glen, a narrow winding lane leading up the hill, she looked eagerly up toward a house that showed just a touch of blue.



"Maybe up there," she said. "That has a hint of blue."

"I don't remember that house being gray before," Rubob said.

"It was white before," Tine said. "And now it definitely has some blue in it --but not enough for the blånissen. They don't live there. They live up on the mountain. Hurry up! Or wait -- maybe we should slow down to give the blue hour time to arrive."

Tine shuffled along at the side of the road, peering into the trees in hopes of seeing a blånisse.

"Is the singular of blånissen blånisse?" she asked Rubob.

"Gesundheit," he replied.

"The silly old thing -- what does he know about Norwegian, or blue elves for that matter?" Tine thought. She wondered, "Do they say Gesundheit in Norway? In French class, Madame Potié ('Madame Potty') would say, 'Que Dieu vous bénisse' -- 'God bless you.'"

"Bénisse ... blånissen," Tine thought. I think Rubob might be on to something!"

"Vous êtes une fille très paresseuse," Madame Potty would say pointedly to poor little Tine -- "You are a very lazy girl." Tine would often sneeze when Madame Potty, who smelled of mothballs and Chanel No. 5, came near her.

"Que Dieu vous bénisse," Tine said to Rubob.

"No, I haven't seen one," Rubob replied.

""Bénisse, not blånissen. But yes, whatever kind of nisse, it's too early, solstice or not," Tine said dejectedly. Her spirits picked up, though, when she saw a house with a blue door, a strikingly blue blue door.



"Maybe the blånissen live there, behind the blue door," she said.

"The Blue Dory," Rubob said -- "now where was that on our journeys?"

"Block Island, Rubob -- that's different. There aren't any blånissen there, as far as I know. They like the mountains, not the beach."

"And then there was that pub on the highway in England -- what was that called?"

"Motorway, Rubob -- it's called the motorway. And the pub was the Blue Boar. I don't think the blånissen like blue boars. They might even be natural enemies out in the wild. We should get a move on. There aren't any blue elves here -- just blue doors, blue dories, blue boars."

"I'm having a blue Christmas, Rubob, and I need to see blue elves to perk me up."

Tine sang to herself:

"I'm dreaming of a blue Christmas,
Just like the ones I used to know,
where the treetops glisten
and children listen
to hear bluebells in the snow."

"Sleighbells, Tine," Rubob said.

"Where?" asked Tine, looking all around her.

"In the snow," Rubob said. "Sleighbells in the snow."

"Oh, you mean bluebells," Tine said.

"Look, Tine, Rubob said -- "a copper cupola on that barn."



"What's on that windvane?" Tine asked. "I can hardly make it out. It's got wheels, doesn't it? Is that really a motorcycle? Well, I declare. There's something we haven't seen before."



Rubob seemed to be more interested in the copper roof on the cupola. "Very weatherproof," Tine thought he was probably thinking. "Long-lasting but costly." The motorcyle escaped his notice, and Rubob, a gentleman farmer, appeared to be absorbed in his own thoughts of barn renovations.

He then turned his attention to an abandoned house on the edge of the woods, a house with no windowpanes.



"What do you think happened there?" Tine asked, and she nearly regretted it, thinking Rubob might launch into a discussion of subprime mortgages and the housing crisis.

But all he said was, "You've seen that house before, Tine. They moved into the log cabin in back. Maybe there's a provision under the law saying there can't be any windows in this house, making it uninhabitable -- otherwise they'd have to pay taxes on both."

"Oh," said Tine. "Well, I'll be."

She rushed out into the middle of the road to get a closer look at a Christmas tree on a hilltop in the woods.



"You're going to get run over!" Rubob called out to her from the side of the road.

"I wonder who put a tree there," Tine said. "Do you think it was the blånissen? They do like mountaintops."

Unfortunately, while the tree was all very colorful, there was a singular lack of blue in the scene, Tine thought.

"It's starting to look hopeless, my search for the blånissen," she thought.

As she and Rubob made their way down Mountain Road, leaping to the side from time to time to avoid the vehicles speeding by at rush hour, Tine looked down at old Robert Brandegee's art studio.



Brandegee was a painter who lived in the village at the turn of the last century.

"You know, Rubob," Tine said, "I'm sure old Mr. Brandegee could work a little blue into the view. He was a landscape painter after all, and we could ask him to go a little heavy with the blue. I wonder what he kept in that paddock down there -- maybe blue elves?"

Tine, who despite what Madame Potty said about her, doesn't waste time getting down to business, began envisioning what a spot of blue could do for the landscape.



"Just the thing," she thought. "But we're still no closer to finding any of those secretive little blånissen, are we Rubob?"

"It might be too early to tell," Rubob said.

"What's that in there?" Tine said, stopping on the icy path. "Look, it's a bubble Santa." Snow was falling in the plastic bubble.



"It's certainly not a blånisse," she said, "but he's quite cheerful."

What Tine didn't realize was that she was actually looking at a genuine nisse, the "Julenisse," or Yule elf, as Santa is called in Norway. It's the Julenisse who brings presents to all the good children.



If she'd only known about the Julenisse , she might have asked the Julenisse if he'd seen any of his occasional helpers, the blånisse, around.

But Tine was "une fille très paresseuse -- tres mauvaise," and she knew not a thing about the jolly Julenisse.

"Let's have a look at the Hill-Stead," she said, walking toward the entrance to old Mrs. Riddle's estate. "That's where the blånissen almost certainly were last January, when we weren't yet on to them."



"Remember this same scene last January, Rubob?"



"It was the blue hour then, to be sure. And we missed them," Tine said. "You understand how the blånissen can transform a landscape, don't you?"

But Rubob, who may have been tiring of Tine's hunt for the blånissen, had walked ahead, drawn to the inviting lights of old Mrs. Riddle's home.



Tine rushed to catch up with Rubob and said, "I don't see blånissen in that scene -- no blue at all. There's a touch of purple in the light over the house, don't you think?"

"I don't see any purple -- or blue for that matter," Rubob said. "Look the lights are still on in the windows. Maybe we can have a look inside."

Tine crept through the snow up to the window.



Just as she was starting to get a good look at the treasures within, the lights went out.

"I think they did that on purpose," she said to Rubob. "They saw me peeping in -- the docents, I mean. It's not permitted. They take a dim view of such things. Oh, bother -- now I've got snow in my shoes."

"You should have worn boots like me," Rubob said. "I'm always prepared for anything -- sensibly dressed for every occasion."

"You're in advance of all contingencies, Rubob, but I wouldn't know what to wear for peeping in windows," Tine said. "It's not something I'm accustomed to do."

Tine emptied the snow out of one of her shoes, and she and Rubob walked around to the side of the Hill-Stead. Tine looked up at the hill behind the house.



"Definitely not blue and definitely no blånissen, but perhaps a touch of purple," she said, sounding a bit defeated. "They're not out tonight -- it's a fact. I've heard that it's customary to leave them some food. Perhaps that's what we overlooked. Do you have a cracker or anything, Rubob? I've read, too, that they like Christmas porridge."

"No, Tine, I didn't bring any Christmas porridge with me."

"That's a shame, Rubob. You're not quite as prepared as you might think."

As the two passed by the front entrance to the house again, Tine said, "What would you think of buying this place and running it as a bed and breakfast, Rubob? Then we could leave food out for the blånissen."



"You could make blueberry pancakes in the morning, and serve them to the guests," she said. "Then I could leave the leftovers on the porch for the blue elves. They'd like that."

She took one last look at the house as they made their way down the driveway, and for a minute there -- no, it wasn't quite blue enough to indicate the presence of the blånissen -- not to Tine's mind, at least.



"Shame, really," Tine thought. "Then again, though ...," and she turned and gazed once more at the scene. "A touch of blue, to be sure, but nary a blånisse in sight."

After leaving old Mrs. Riddle's estate, they passed a house that was once owned by a prominent restaurateur and caterer, Ann Howard.



"You didn't seem that keen on making blueberry pancakes for our guests at the Hill-Stead B & B, Rubob. You didn't even reply. Maybe Ann Howard could do the cooking for us. What would you say about that?"

Tine failed to notice the sky above Ann Howard's house -- or former house. It's a good thing, too, because Tine might have been tempted to peep in the windows in search of the blånissen -- or at the very least, wander back into the garden. She'd done enough peering into people's windows and gardens for the evening, and come up without a single blånisse -- a bubble Santa maybe, but no blånissen.

"Nope, Rubob, not a single one," she said. "One must learn to get by in the gloaming without the blånissen. What a blue Christmas indeed -- or non-blue Christmas, really."

"There's that lovely wreath up there," Rubob said. "What about that for some Christmas cheer?"



"No, I can't be doing with it -- definitely not blue," Tine replied. Again, she might have focused her gaze a little higher at the night sky. When Tine's mind is made up that there are no blånissen to be seen, there's evidently no persuading her otherwise -- or perhaps she simply couldn't make out the blue in the deepening darkness.

"Christmas is lovely, what with its red and green and multicolored lights and all, but it could use a spot more of blue, with bluebells in the snow, like in Irving Berlin's 'Blue Christmas," she said.



"Bluebells?" Rubob asked.

"The blånissen evidently have the night off," Rubob. "They can't be out painting the landscape every night. They're mischievous and unpredictable -- perhaps sometimes even a trifle lazy on cold winter nights -- and that's how it should be. Even so, I hope they show up one of these evenings around Christmas. It'd be ever so nice, wouldn't it?"

As Tine wended her way home with Rubob, she reflected that though the blue hour wasn't quite as blue as she would have liked, all in all, it was still a very pleasant walk.