Swedes - the Advent Children

Sunday was "1st Advent" in Sweden. That's the 4:th sunday before Christmas.

Swedes have a bizzare relationship to Christmas. It's one of the biggest "feasts" of the year to a Swede, but Christ is not the main character (we get to who is later).

Christmas is a not a religious feast to most Swedes. This is because everyone stole our Midvinterblot anyway!!!.

Yes, the Christmas you all celebrate is our old pagan viking mid-winter party! And just because some guy comes walking into our country with a big X we aren't going to change our partying habits! ;)

Yes, there is a certain (limited) amount of lip-service paid to "Christ", and some church-related stuff, like "julottan", which is going really stupidly early to church on Christmas morning. Mostly the older generations actually do that, and not so much for religious reasons as due to "it's what you do on Christmas morn'".

Thats us in a nutshell, Swedes, we do stuff coz "that's what you do", not due to some massive underlying belief of some sort. Tradition.

And for Christmas we have a lot of tradition, because it's a mess. We are going to come to some of that later.

The first "christmas related" thing (apart from putting up some early christmas decorations, like the christmas curtains) is the four-candle "Adventsljusstake", i.e. a special candle-holder-thingamabob which takes 4 candles, and for each sunday-before-xmas-eve (we celebrate Christmas Eve, not Christmas Day, btw) we light one candle.

So first one,
then next week two,
then the next week three
and the week after that all four

...and just like those sentences generate a staggered appearance, so does the "Adventsljusstake", on Christmas Eve, if there is anything left of the 1st candle, you'll see a staircase looking contraption with a really short candle, a slightly longer, another even longer, and one longer than that.



Bizarre.

And we are big on candles.

I read an article by a Swede that was living temporarily in Japan and invited some japanese friends for a Christmas dinner. They had lit the entire aparment with candles, and the Japanese came in and wonder "oh, is the power out? Want help finding the fusebox". LOL. Also the Japanese guy saw the two lite candles in the "Adventsljusstake" and took out his lighter and lit the remaining two! TEH BLASPHEMER!

More Bizzare Swedish Christmas ritual to follow, next week.... when we mix Satanism with a Sicilian Saint, and setting fire to hair with Ginger Snaps.

Stay Tuned.

/Z