Swedish Christmas Traditions - what we've learned so far

God Jul och Ett Gott Nytt År!! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Sweden is a beautiful place for the Christmas season.  The snow reflects what (little) sunlight may be shining and everything seems so much brighter and lighter.  The change from dreary gray November to bright white December happened essentially overnight.  We have learned that Christmas in Sweden is not unlike Christmas in America in that people still like to decorate their houses with lights - maybe not quite the crazy displays on Candy Cane Lane because Swedes are a little more understated, but still lighting the street with white lights and candles in the windows.  There are Christmas trees up in the airport and the city streets are lined with snowflakes.  Every part of town seems to have their own Christmas tree (and they all judge one another's) and this year, at least, everything is covered in a few feet of white snow.

US Candy Cane Lane Christmas light craziness

Gamla Stan, Stockholm

St. Lucia

I mentioned St. Lucia in my earlier article but St. Lucia day, December 13, is a day of celebrating light and re-birth. It is a clear reference to life in the peasant communities of old: darkness and light, cold and warmth. Lucia is an ancient mythical figure with a role of a bearer of light in the dark Swedish winters.  The St. Lucia song goes something like this:

The night treads heavily
around yards and dwellings
In places unreached by sun,
the shadows brood
Into our dark house she comes,
bearing lighted candles,
Saint Lucia, Saint Lucia.

Like any good Swedish holiday, this one features 2 desserts -- ginger snaps and sweet, saffron buns (lussekatter) shaped like curled up cats with rasin eyes.  You enjoy them with glögg (the name of our blog) and/or coffee.

Tomte

Tomte and his warm risgryngröt

America has Santa Claus and Scandinavians have Tomte.  Back in the day (olden times), Sweden was entirely rural and every farm had their own tomte, gnome, dressed in grey, who guarded the farm.  He watched the family and made sure everyone did their job.  If the family was lazy, tomte would punish the farm with bad crops, weather, etc.  If you worked hard, the tomte would reward you with a good harvest.  Every year around Christmas time,

Our Swedish-American Christmas tree

Not having a car hasn't really posed a problem to us living in Stockholm. We are able to take advantage of our Lidingöbanan (tram) into Stockholm to connect to the Tunnelbanan (T).  Even though we live in a house, the tram is an 8 minute walk and we've been making the best of it, even in the snow.

However, when it comes to getting a Christmas tree, we were afraid that we would need to convince one of our kind neighbors into helping us with a car.  We've never attempted to get a Christmas tree to our house without a car ... how do we do this? Are you allowed to take a tree on the bus?  This could get weird.

I asked our local grocery store cashier if Christmas trees were being sold around the area.  He assured me that a guy sells trees "later on in December, at the electric hus."  He points across the tram tracks and I see two electric shed type buildings that could qualify as an "electric hus" and just cross my fingers that Christmas trees will magically appear sometime in December.

So, fast-forward to after St. Lucia day, Jon and I decide that "today is the day!" -- we need to get a Christmas tree today!  It's somewhat blizzard-ing outside (seems like it does this once a week) and Jon heads out into the snow with the intent of taking the tram to the last place we saw Christmas trees (15 min tram ride away).  The plan: find a tree, bring it back on the tram (we saw someone doing this) and then haul it up our snowy/icy hill.  He says if he's not back in 2 hours, to call it a loss and carry on with life without him.  All jokes aside, I am kind of worried.  It's getting dark around 2pm now and it's already 2:15 when he heads out into the snow.

Happy St. Lucia Day!

Our grumpy gingerbread kid

Every December 13th, Sweden celebrates St. Lucia by welcoming the light and dressing children as angels with lit candle crowns on their heads.  Calvin's dagis invited all of the children and parents to attend their St. Lucia celebration.  Not knowing what costume to get for Calvin, I headed to the nearest Åhlens department store and found a TON of options.  Calvin could dress as St. Lucia herself (oh gender neutral Sweden), a star boy, tomte (Santa elf), or a gingerbread kid.  I thought that the St. Lucia outfits would look better on the girls (I'm sexist, sorry) and that the Santa outfit would be adorable, but expected by our American friends.  So when I found the gingerbread outfit with a cute cap I thought it would be absolutely perfect.

What Calvin really looked like under his snow suit

Already a little grumps...should've known!

Jon and I head off to dagis with Calvin in the dark (it is a procession of light after all) and are super excited to see Calvin in our first Swedish St. Lucia celebration.  We arrive and I notice that all of the kids have their St. Lucia costumes on the outside of their snow pants and jackets.  Ahhhh!  What?!?  Nobody will get to see Calvin's gingerbread costume because it was inside his snowclothes.  I had no idea they were going to have the procession outside.  I didn't know!

Snow-pocalypse

 Last year we had a CRAZY snowstorm in Atlanta (might have been two years ago).  There was ½ an inch of snow, and the city legitimately shut down for a week.  Because it was the first snow in a decade, they obviously didn’t have any plows, and then everything froze, and southerners can’t drive if it rains, so you can only imagine what snow/ice can do, and so on and so forth – it was nuts.

That was my last experience with a debilitating snowstorm, and I was looking forward to seeing how in-stride Stockholm would handle their snow.  When we moved here in January, there was a bunch of snow on the ground and it didn’t really affect anything.  I figured that Stockholm had a solid snow plan and didn’t really worry about the weather.

Well, as Mike Tyson used to say, “everyone has a plan till they get punched in the mouth”.  And evidently, the storm we had last week was the weather equivalent of getting a tyson-style uppercut.

they guys ah wicked smaht

One of the big things that Stockholm is known for is that it is the home of the Noble Prize (not the Peace Prize, for some reason Oslo has that…).  It’s a pretty big deal here – it was water cooler (coffee machine) talk the week they announced the winners, and the banquet (held at City Hall) is the hottest ticket of the year. 

Wanting to get into all things Stockholm, I was kind of geekily-excited when I researched and found out that they had scheduled a series of talks by all the Nobel Laureates that would be open to the public.  The odds of me understanding any of the talks was low, but at least I could soak up the genius.

So after scouting it out, I found that the talks would start Saturday morning at 9am, and go till about 3pm (physics from 9-1030, then chemistry from 11- 1230 and economics bringing it home).  That would have been a little too much Nobel for my first time, but that first session would allow me to check the “attend a nobel lecture” off of my bucket list.  (Yes, I have found that I am now retroactively adding cool things we do to my bucket list).