A year of celebrations

Sweden is predominantly secular, although Christian by tradition. This means religion has little influence on how society is shaped, but many of our traditions have religious roots. Our celebrations tend to circle around family, friends and food rather than church.

Faiths and customs from other parts of the world meet here too, sometimes influencing or adding to our list of celebrations. This is largely a result of Sweden’s long history of immigration. One in five of us have roots in another country. Ramadan is a fairly recent example of new traditions that some of us celebrate. The holy Islamic month includes fasting from dawn till dusk, and when it occurs during summer, the midnight sun poses a challenge to Muslims.

Perhaps our love of old customs is a natural consequence of our country being driven by change and innovation. Perhaps keeping one foot in history adds a much-needed feeling of continuity to our lives, a sense of belonging. Customs also connect us to the changing seasons.

Let’s take a closer look at some Swedish celebrations around the year: National Day, Midsummer, the crayfish party, Lucia and Christmas.

public holidays can be found in the Swedish calendar. Some are of religious origin, like Christmas, whereas Midsummer is a more pagan affair.

Semla

After New Year’s Eve the beginning of the year doesn’t hold much in terms of celebrations –but we do have the semla. This bun overflows the window displays of bakeries and cafés from January to March. It is a small wheat bun flavoured with cardamom and filled with almond paste and whipped cream. Its traditions are rooted in fettisdag (Shrove Tuesday, or Fat Tuesday) when the bun was eaten at a last celebratory feast before the Christian fasting period of Lent. Now we eat it because it’s yummy.

Our National Day falls on 6 June, the day that Gustav Vasa was elected king. It only took us 482 years to turn it into a public holiday.

National Day

It’s 6 June and we have the day off because it’s our National Day. Funnily enough, we’re new to this holiday, so we’re still trying to figure out how to celebrate it, besides flying the flag. Do we go to a public gathering or do we just enjoy the day off, indulging in good food?

It was around the turn of the 19th/20th century that we first started celebrating 6 June as our National Day. But it would take until 2005 for it to become an official national holiday.

The reason why we celebrate on 6 June is two-fold: On 6 June 1523 Gustav Vasa, sometimes labelled the founder of modern Sweden, was elected king, and on 6 June 1809, Sweden adopted a new constitution. The new constitution meant an important step towards democracy. So, in essence, our National Day is a celebration of openness and equality.

While we’re struggling to decide how to best celebrate our country, a more certain event of the day is the King and Queen of Sweden taking part in a ceremony at Skansen, Stockholm’s open-air museum opened in 1891. Children in traditional costumes present the royal couple with flower bouquets and the Swedish flag is run up the mast.

Midsummer

It’s now a couple of weeks later. Schools are out and nature has burst into life. The sun barely sets, or in the north not at all. Around 21 June is summer solstice, the reason we celebrate Midsummer – ever since pagan times. For practical reasons, we celebrate on a Friday between 19 and 25 June.

As it’s Midsummer weekend, we join the exodus from the cities to the countryside to meet up with friends and family. Midsummer is no time to spend in a city.

Arriving at the party, a table is already set in the garden, decorations and all – and we can’t wait to dig into the herring and potato lunch. But first, there are a number of rituals that need to be completed: picking wild leaves and flowers, dressing the Midsummer pole with said leaves and flowers, and raising the pole. The leftover flowers are used to make wreaths for our heads.

The Midsummer pole is absolutely pivotal to our celebration. We decorate it with greenery, we raise it, we dance around it. And the sillier we look, the better.

Be Finding your dream partner

According to ancient tradition, young women should pick seven different flowers and lay them under the pillow on the night to Midsummer Day. They will then dream of their future partner. (This magic trick probably also works for young men.)

When it’s finally time to sit down for lunch, we may end up having to carry the table indoors due to sudden rain showers – and then outdoors again when the sun reappears.

It wouldn’t be Midsummer if the herring wasn’t washed down with some schnapps (a shot of alcohol, often cumin-flavoured).

And the schnapps wouldn’t be drunk without a silly drinking song – an age-old tradition, passed down from generation to generation. Strawberry cake follows. Now, we’re all fed and happy – let the dancing begin!

Children and some brave adults form a circle around the Midsummer pole and dance to traditional songs. It’s more or less a matter of moving in one direction, so not too complicated. If we’re lucky we’re near a town or village that has arranged public Midsummer dancing, where a group of folk musicians accompany the dancing crowd.

As it never gets really dark this time of year, the party can go on for hours on end. Eventually, the mist starts dancing across the fields, and it may, after all, be time for bed.

The crayfish party

August is here. Tender is the night, crayfish heaped on the table. To set the scene properly, we also need beer and schnapps. At this party everything revolves around the crayfish. The colourful paper cloths, plates, napkins and lanterns are all decorated with crayfish. And as we’re going all in, we also wear crayfish party custom-made bibs and silly paper hats. We eat, drink, sing and are merry.

Nowadays this delicacy can be bought any time of the year, but we like to save the crayfish slurping for the traditional premiere in August. The crayfish are fished out of lakes and rivers, or langoustines from the sea, and then boiled with lots of dill, and sometimes a dash of beer. Landed on our plates, they are shelled, sucked and devoured.

In all honesty, not many of us go fishing ourselves. We generally pick up already boiled and packaged crayfish from the supermarket fridge or freezer.

It's the second Sunday of Advent, and we light Advent candle number two. Christmas nears.

Lucia and Christmas

Fast-forwarding to December. If we’re lucky, snow has fallen to brighten up the quickly darkening nights, creating that special Christmas feeling. Maybe Christmas is just as commercial in Sweden as anywhere else, but it’s also a time when we bring out our hand-crafted decorations, fill our homes with candlelight, and go back to our grandmother’s recipes to bake gingerbread biscuits, pepparkakor, and saffron buns, lussebullar.

Starting on the first of Advent, four Sundays before Christmas, December is party time. Friends and neighbours invite each other over for sweet mulled wine and offices have Christmas parties. As secular as Swedes may be, even we admit that the Christmas season and all its traditions are sacred to us.

Shh! Turn out the lights! It’s 13 December, Lucia Day. In nursery schools and preschools all over the country, little feet are shuffling and white nightgowns flapping, making candle lights flicker.

First in the procession comes Lucia, wearing a wreath with electric candles on her head and a red ribbon around her waist. Then come Lucia’s ‘handmaidens’, carrying candles in their hands. There are also Father Christmas helpers dressed in red, ‘star boys’ in white gowns with paper cones on their heads and stars on sticks in their hands, and gingerbread men.

The children sing well-known, traditional songs of Lucia and Christmas in front of immensely proud parents. As the children grow older, competition to become Lucia is sometimes fierce. Every passing year also makes it increasingly difficult to recruit star boys, as some become more reluctant to wear a ‘girly’ nightgown.

Eleven days later is Christmas Eve. In our book, 24 December is the big day of Father Christmas. Christmas Day and the day after are also holidays in the Swedish calendar, and when possible, we prefer to also take the days between Christmas and New Year off, giving us a nice, long and relaxing holiday.

A mouth-watering Christmas smorgasbord of pickled herring, meatballs, red cabbage, Christmas ham and much, much more is often served at lunchtime. The afternoon will be spent socialising, all while eating unjustifiable amounts of sweets and cakes. Then: a sudden knock on the door. Father Christmas is here! Eager children rip open their Christmas presents and can finally start playing with their new toys. Thank God! Um, sorry, thank Father Christmas! 

Julbord is our Christmas smorgasbord, laden with everything from herring to ham.

Legendary Lucia

On Christmas Eve someone gets the honour of dressing up as Father Christmas, occasionally scaring the youngest ones. But all is forgiven with a saffron-flavoured lussekatt.

St Lucia is surrounded by many legends. Was she St Lucia of Syracuse or maybe Adam’s first wife? Her name may be associated with both lux (light) and Lucifer (the devil). In the old calendar, Lucia night was the longest night of the year. Back then, most Swedes seemed to agree that it was a dangerous night, when animals could speak, and supernatural beings were lurking in the dark. Many preferred to stay awake through the night. In fact, some young people still observe the tradition of Lucia wake – but normally just as an excuse for an all-night party.