There are communal Christmas events in real life London that are, essentially, commercially drivemn – such as the turning on of the Christmas lights in one of London’s main shopping streets and the unveiling of the beautiful Christmas windows that are created afresh every year by Selfridges’ department store.
But there’s one event in the run-up to Christmas every year that goes beyond commercialsim and marks something very special, and that is the lighting of the huge Christmas tree that is errected in Trafalgar Square every year. Every year since 1947, a Norway Spruce (or sometimes a fir) is given by Norway’s capital Oslo and presented as London’s Christmas tree, as a token of gratitude for Britain’s support during World War II. (Besides the general war support, Norway’s Prince Olav, as well as the country’s government, lived in exile in London throughout the war.) As part of the tradition, the Lord Mayor of Westminster visits Oslo in the late autumn to take part in the felling of the tree, and the Mayor of Oslo then comes to London to light the tree at the Christmas ceremony.
And this year, that special ceremony found its counterpart in Second Life, when the inhabitants of Second Life Norway led by Fish Palen, presented the inhabitants of Second Life London, represented by the sims’ owner, Debs Regent, with a Christmas tree in a moving ceremony at the status of Eros in SL London’s Mayfair sim, close to the statue of Eros (located in Picadilly Circus in the real London).
Fish Palen of Second Norway made a speech, explaining the tradition, and telling a story about how his own grandfather became part of the English-Norwegian collaboration during the war.
During the war, numerous Norwegians fled into exile in England where many of them received special military training, before being transported back to Norway to fight a covert war during the Occupation. The most famous of these operations was the sabotage against Norsk Hydro’s power plant at Vemork in Rjukan, where a joint force of British and Norwegian commandos managed to stop production of heavy water; a vital ingredient in nuclear research. The result was that Germany had to end their ambitions to get the world’s first nuclear bomb.
As Fish explained, not all the British commandos made it home safely. Even before the attack on the power plant started, several planes carrying British troops were shot down by anti-aircraft guns.
“My grandfather and some of his friends witnessed one of these shoot downs,” Fish told the gathered crowd of Second Life Londoners and Norwegians. “It happened in a very rural area of Telemark County, and they managed to carry off and bury the dead bodies before Germans soldiers got to the crash site. After the war, my grandfather helped the authorities locate the burial site, so that the dead could be given proper funeral ceremonies.”
A sober reminder of the origins of the tradition – but, in fact, the day was in fact a great celebration with a sizeable crowd from SL London and Second Norway meeting to commemorate and celebrate – and then going to a party at the Underground Club!
Prim Perfect 
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