Merry Christmas – Moominland Midwinter Read Aloud

Select quotes from Tove Jansson’s 1957 “Moominland Midwinter:

One

On the other side of the lamp someone had dug herself a cozy hole, someone who lay looking up at the serene winter sky and whistling very softly to herself.

“What song is that?” asked Moomintroll.

“It ‘s a song of myself,” someone answered from the pit. “A song of Too-ticky, who built a snow lantern, but the refrain is about wholly other things.”

“I see,” Moomintroll said and seated himself in the snow.

“No, you don’t,” replied Too-ticky genially and rose up enough to show her red and white sweater.

“Because the refrain is about the things one can’t understand. I’m thinking about the aurora borealis. You can’t tell if it really does or doesn’t exist or if it just looks like existing. All things are so very uncertain, and that’s exactly what makes me feel reassured.”

Two

“Tell me about the snow,” Moomintroll said and seated himself in Moominpappa’s sun-bleached garden chair. “I don’t understand it.”

“I don’t either,” said Too-ticky. “You believe it’s cold, but if you build yourself a snowhouse it’s warm. You think it’s white, but at times it looks pink, and another time it’s blue. It can be softer than anything, and then again harder than stone. Nothing is certain.”

Three

When Moonintroll stepped out in the grey twilight, a strange white horse was standing by the verandah, staring at him with luminous eyes. He cautiously approached and greeted it, but the horse didn’t move.

Moomintroll now saw that it was made out of snow. Its tail was the broom from the woodshed, and its eyes were small mirrors. He would see his own picture in the mirror eyes, and this frightened him a little. So he made a detour by the bare jasmine bushes.

“If there only were a single soul here that I knew of old,” Moomintroll thought. “Somebody who wouldn’t be mysterious, just quite ordinary. Somebody who had also awakened and didn’t feel at home. Then one could say: “Hello! Terribly cold, isn’t it? Snow’s a silly thing, what? Have you seen the jasmine bushes? Remember last summer when…? Or things like that.”

Four

Too-ticky rubbed her nose and thought. “Well, it’s like this,” she said. “There are such a lot of things that have no place in summer and autumn and spring. Everything that’s a little shy and a little rum. Some kinds of odd night animals and people that don’t fit in with others and that nobody really believes in. They keep out of the way all the year. And then when everything is quiet and white and the nights are long and most people are asleep-then they appear.”

“Do you know them?” asked Moomintroll.

“Some of them,” replied Too-ticky. “The Dweller Under the Sink, for instance, quite well. But I believe that he wants to lead a secret life, so I can’t introduce you to each other.”

Moomintroll kicked at the table leg and sighed. “I see, I see,” he replied. “But I don’t want to lead a secret life. Here one comes stumbling into something altogether new and strange, and not a soul even asking one in what kind of a world one has lived before. Not even Little My wants to talk about the real world.”

“And how does one tell which one is the real one?” said Too-ticky with her nose pressed against a pane.

Five

Any sensible person could have told him that this was the very moment when the long spring was born. But there didn’t happen to be any sensible person on the shore, but only a confused Moomin crawling on all fours against the wind, in a totally wrong direction. 

He crawled and he crawled, and the snow bunged up his eyes and formed a little drift on his nose. Moomintroll became more and more convinced that this was a trick the winter had decided to play on him with the intention of showing him simply that he couldn’t stand it. 

First, it had taken him in by its beautiful curtain of slowly falling flakes, and then it threw all the beautiful snow in his face at the very moment he believed that he had started to like winter.

By and by Moomintroll became angry.

He straightened up and tried to shout at the gale. 

He hit out against the snow and also whimpered a little, as there was no one to hear him.

Then he tired.

He turned his back to the blizzard and stopped fighting it.

Not until then did Moomintroll notice that the wind felt warm. It carried him along into the whirling snow, it made him feel light and almost like flying.

“I’m nothing but air and wind, I’m part of the blizzard,” Moomintroll thought and let himself go.

“It’s almost like last summer. You first fight the waves, then you turn around and ride the surf, sailing along like a cork among the little rainbows of the foam, and land laughing and just a little frightened in the sand.”

Moomintroll spread out his arms and flew.

“Frighten me if you can,” he thought happily. “I’m wise to you now. You’re no worse than anything else when one gets to know you. Now you won’t be able to pull my leg anymore.”

And the winter danced him all along the snowy shore and plowed his now though a snowdrift. When he looked up, he saw a faint, warm light. It was the window of the bathing house.

“Oh, I’m saved,” Moomintroll said to himself, a little crestfallen. It’s a pity that exciting things always stop happening when you’re not afraid of them anymore and would like to have a little fun.”

Six

“Now the bathing house’ll be a bathing house again,” she said. “When summer’s hot and green, and you lie on your tummy on the warm boards of the landing stage, and listen to the waves chuckling and clucking…”

“Why didn’t you talk like that in the winter?” said Moomintroll. “It’d have been such a comfort. Remember, I said once: “There were a lot of apples here,” And you just replied: “But now there’s a lot of snow.” “Didn’t you understand that I was melancholy?”

Too-ticky shrugged her shoulders. “One has to discover everything for oneself,” she replied. “And get over it all alone.”

Seven

Meanwhile, the Snork Maiden had come across the first brave nose-tip of a crocus. It was pushing through the warm spot under the south window, but wasn’t even green yet. 

“Let’s put a glass over it,” said the Snork Maiden.

“It’ll be better off in the night if there’s a frost.”

“No, don’t do that,” said Moomintroll. “Let it fight it out. I believe it’s going to do still better if things aren’t so easy.”

Moominland Midwinter Read Aloud