Merry Christmas! To celebrate the season, I'm sharing clips, extras and behind-the-scenes notes from Rick Steves' European Christmas.
In writing the Rick Steves' European Christmas script, I had to choose which countries would "make the cut." I could fit only seven into the mix. Being Norwegian, I admit that I was biased...and Norway was destined to make the cut. But when we started filming, it looked like Norway would be a weak segment...so I needed to scramble.
Norway happened to be wet and warm when we visited, and the secular Norwegians don't really do Christmas with the gusto I had imagined. I visited my very traditional cousin, only to find that their holiday celebration felt about as robust as Columbus Day.
But we did manage to go to Drøbak, the self-proclaimed Christmas capital of Norway, and take part in Santa Lucia Day, which brings everyone out to dance around the trees...with their crowns of real candles.
In Oslo, we had one night to get some music. When a concert we planned to film fell through at the last moment, I searched the entertainment listings and found the Norwegian Girls' Choir performing in the oldest church in Oslo -- the tiny, heavy-stone, Viking Age Gamle Aker Kirke. We drove there and arrived just half an hour before the concert began. With the crew double-parked in the dark, I ran in, found the director, pleaded my case...and he said, "Ya, sure." We finished setting up just minutes before show time. The lights went out and an angelic choir of beautiful, blonde, candle-carrying girls processed in, filling the cold stone interior with a glowing light. As the harpist did her magic, I just sat in the back, feeling very thankful. This concert ended up giving us several of the best cuts on our CD and some of the most beautiful photos for our coffee-table book.
Scheduling was also tricky. Certain events -- such as a choir singing "Silent Night" in the church where it was first performed near Salzburg, Santa Lucia Day in Norway on December 13, and Christmas Eve Mass at the Vatican -- were fixed, so we had to work our schedule around those. Each of the two crews generally had three or four days to film a region, and then one day to travel to the next. Our script was designed to playfully let the Christmas season build -- but never quite reach a holiday climax -- in each place we filmed. Then, in a festive finale, bells ring throughout the Continent as Christmas Day sweeps across Europe.
But I'm getting ahead of myself -- that clip is on its way. First -- like a video Advent calendar -- we have lots more windows to open, peeking in on families and cultures and countries as Christmas approaches.