Tales from Crete | 64

Several months ago, Maria (the middle of the 3 daughters I have) started posting her and her children's Christmas wishes on our small closed family group on Facebook. She is always the first and Victor (the youngest of my children) is almost always the last. I myself always put in some Christmas wish, even if I don't really know what to wish for. But this year I actually have an extra Christmas wish, which unfortunately will probably be difficult to wrap up, difficult to give and includes far more people than we are in our little Facebook group.

I want us to abolish the "Janteloven" once and for all.

If you search on Google, you get 429,000 results today when you write "Janteloven". If you search instead for "Grundloven" you get 409,000 results and if you search for "Traffic Act" only 152,000 results appear. The "Environmental Protection Act" gives 73,100 results, while the "Criminal Act" tops with 711,000 results.

One can thus establish with simple arithmetic that the Criminal Code and the Criminal Code have more than twice the number of results of the Traffic Act, the Environment Act and the Basic Law combined. I can understand why we have the Basic Law, the Traffic Act, the Criminal Code, etc., but the Janteloven... What are we going to use it for?

Janteloven is a term created by the Danish-Norwegian writer Aksel Sandemose in the novel "A refugee crosses his tracks", which was published in 1933. In the novel, Sandemose depicts the fictional town of Jante, which has a lot in common with the author's own hometown of Nykøbing Mors, in the beginning of the 20th century. Jante is a town where people hold each other down and do not allow anyone to notice their skill. The Janteloven is the law that citizens exercise against each other, and it functions as an informal criminal law. Like the Bible's ten commandments, the Janteloven also consists of ten orders that read as follows:

Don't think you are anything.

Don't think you are as much as us.

Don't think you're smarter than us.

You must not imagine that you are better than us.

Don't think you know more than us.

Don't think you are more than us.

Don't think you're good for anything.

Don't laugh at us.

Don't think anyone cares about you.

Don't think you can teach us anything.”

In my eyes, the Janteloven is an expression of ugly envy of the worst kind, which works against any form of innovative development. If you stick your nose out, you get one over the nose to say the least. 

Then I much prefer the alternative positive newer Jantelov, which also has 10 commandments:

You must know that you are something.

You need to know that you are just as much as us.

You should know that you are smarter than us.

You must know that you are better than us.

You need to know that you know more than us.

You must know that you are more than us.

You must know that you are up to something.

You have to laugh at us.

You need to know that someone cares about you.

You must know that you can teach us something

So, if you, dear reader, are in need of a Christmas present for someone you care about, give him/her the alternative positive Jantelov. I believe it brings far more joy than so much else (and it's actually quite free).

May you all have a fantastic Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year.

I myself am taking a short break with the stories until January 3, 2020, when I will enjoy the days getting longer and be happy that there are not many months until I start the new year's trips to Crete, where the first registrations have already been entered on the computer.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

(Merry Christmas and Happy New Year)