The Squeee

December 23 is to Swedes what December 24 is to everyone who celebrate Christmas on the 25th: it's The Day Before. We have our julfirande on the 24th, so the day before it's done in places like the UK. As a Swede living in Britain, treating the 24th as, well, the 23rd is treated back home, is very strange indeed. If I work for a British company and spend Christmas in the UK, I have to book the day off if it falls on a weekday, because otherwise, you're expected to work. How can I be at work when I'm supposed to be celebrating Christmas?! Anyway, more about a Swedish Christmas tomorrow. Today, we light the fourth and final candle in the Advent chandelier, eat the penultimate chocolate in the calendar, watch the penultimate episode of the TV calendar, and prepare for tomorrow. This generally means starting to prepare food. I meant to write this post earlier in the day, but I was busy preparing food, see. ;)

I recently realised that there are certain times of year when I miss Sweden more than others, namely December. "But we have things leading up to Christmas here too!" said the Squeeze, not at all understanding there's a big difference. Yes, I can certainly light candles for Advent here too, that's not an issue. I can also make the same kind of home-made candy, and most of the Christmas food I like I can make in Britain too. But it's still not the same. Not just because it's warmer here and less chance of snow. Things like waiting for someone to burn down the big straw goat in Gävle (newspapers today report someone did this last night!), Twelfth Night, and ... Lucia . Lucia is something we all grow up with and is a tradition that you won't find outside Sweden, unless you go to the embassy or something. I can't just dress up and have my own one-person Lucia procession, because it just doesn't work. You have to be there, in Sweden, and I'm no...

Do you know what day they hand out the Nobel Prizes? Most Swedes will be able to tell you: 10 December, the Nobel Day - Nobeldagen . The Peace Prize is given out in Norway, but the rest (as far as I know) are given out in Stockholm. In the evening, the Nobel party (Nobelfesten) is televised, and people do enjoy watching the winners, the royal family, politicians and a bunch of others arrive at the City Hall in Stockholm. TV commentators will talk about who's who, who's wearing what, what the people who have just arrived and are now being shown to their seats are going to eat, and so on.

If all goes well, I anticipate there being a whole host of Swedish Ways posts this month, leading up to Christmas. Or jul (Yule) as we call it, because we're all Pagan Vikings at heart! :D Which is funny, because Christmas tends to be a fairly big deal in Sweden, despite it being an extremely secular society where you're generally seen as a little bit of a weirdo if you attend church regularly. Unless you're a pensioner, perhaps, or your parents forced you to do Confirmation studies when you were 14, despite your heartfelt assurances that it would be a waste of everyone's time. Churches seemed to be very popular in Germany, though. This one's from Schönwald-im-Schwarzwald.

Yesterday, it was the name day of everyone called Anders. There's a saying in Sweden, "Om Anders braskar så slaskar jul", roughly "If Anders is cold, Christmas will be wet", but in archaic language. It works the other way around too. If Anders[' name day] is cold or freezing, Christmas will be mild and rainy, but if it's mild and rainy on 30 November, Christmas will be cold and frosty - maybe even snowy if you're lucky. (Doesn't really work as well if you live in the northern part of the country, where you're probably pretty much guaranteed a snowy landscape from November onwards. Or maybe that's just a prejudice from us southerners.) Oh baby, it's cold outside. If I remember it correctly, it's nothing but a myth, but we still like to say it. Here, the day was fairly cold, starting with having to scrape frost off cars in the morning. Still not very cold, though, it was around -1°C when I left the house in the morning. If...

Back in the 1600s, Sweden was a much bigger country than it is now, and we were at war a lot. We even went all the way down Germany and besieged places like Koblenz (colour me surprised!). As school children, we learn of all this, and we can't not remember the story of how King Gustav II Adolf (wider known in English as Gustavus Adolphus Magnus , apparently) met his maker. It goes something like this (bearing in mind it was 20 years ago now):

All Hallows Eve, All Saint's Day, or as we call it in Sweden: Alla helgons dag or Allhelgonadagen falls this weekend. Technically, I think it's All Saint's Eve followed by All Saint's Day, but the Saturday is a red letter day in the calendar. The object is to pay hommage to the dead. [ Source ] It's not the excitement of the Mexican Festival of the Dead, nor does it really have anything to do with actual saints - Sweden's a Lutheran Protestant country, so we traditionally don't really "do" saints. No, instead, it's the time of year when people visit the graves of their loved ones, light a candle and perhaps lay a fresh wreath by the tombstone. It sure lights up the graveyards at night!

I was going to write a post, but then ... then someone posted a link to this video and a description seems sort of superfluous! ...Okay, maybe some things need explaining after all.

6 June is the national day ( Nationaldagen ) of Sweden. It didn't use to be a holiday, but a few years ago, after I moved to Britain, they decided to scrap Whitmonday as a red letter day and have the national day off instead. When I was in primary school, we'd perhaps gather around the flagpole in the school grounds and sing the national anthem and that was pretty much it. On the other hand, roundabout now, Swedish schools finish for the summer, so most kids and teenagers will be kind of preoccupied with other things ...

Today, Norway celebrate their release from the union with Sweden. They celebrate it passionately, so happy are they to be rid of us. Ahh well. Hope you guys all have a great Syttene Mai, neighbourinos! This year, Norway's national day co-incides with Kristi himmelfärdsdag , which is Ascension Day in English. This is the day when, according to the New Testament, flight Jesus Christ took off from planet Earth, or the Son of God ascended into heaven after having died on a cross and resurrected three days later around Easter, if you will.

The first of May, första maj, is a red letter day in Sweden. Emphasis on red. You could stay at home nursing a hangover from last night's Valborg-celebrations, or you could go out and join a demonstration. May 1st is the international labourers' day (or something like that) and the labour union movement in Sweden has traditionally been very strong, if perhaps slightly on the decline in recent years. There was a famous riot in Ådalen in 1931, made into a film by Lasse Hallström or someone. We saw it in class once upon a time. So on the first day of May, it's common to have political rallies and speeches and demonstrations, because Socialism is kind of a big deal in my home country. (If you can't distinguish between Socialism and Communism, go educate yourself now. Seriously. Especially if you think Socialism "doesn't work". Do your homework.) Anyway. Happy May Day; go stick it to the man!

On the final day of April, Swedes take to lighting big bonfires and sing to celebrate the coming of spring and to be free of the final clutches of winter. [ Source ] Traditionally, we'd put on our graduation caps and sing in choirs (especially if you're a university student at Lund or Uppsala), about how spring has sprung. The event is called Walpurgisnacht in Germany, but we call it Valborg , or Valborgsmässoafton .

Glad påsk! [ Source ] In Britain, Easter seems to only mean two bank holidays, chocolate eggs and Biblical adaptations on telly. In Sweden, aside from the extra days off work, the chocolate eggs and Charlton Heston, you would - at least when I was growing up - eat boiled eggs which you had painted in one way or another. Some days before, you would have brought in birch twigs and adorned it with coloured feathers and little egg-ornaments and things. Think tabletop Christmas tree and you're on the right lines. If you made sure to put water in the vase (and marbles to weigh it down so it wouldn't fall over), the twigs would sprout little green leaves in the indoor warmth, and if you've never smelled opening birch leaf buds, you don't know what you're missing.

Because I've been really busy with work recently, and because today is a Bank Holiday, I'm actually going to take a little break, and not post a review today. In fact, I'm going to shock myself and not even write one for Monday either, because that's also a bank holiday! Instead, for today, I'll write a few words about Easter in Sweden. Today is Good Friday, or Långfredagen as we call it. "Long Friday", the day when Jesus got captured and eventually strung up on a cross. Back in the day, you weren't supposed to do any work on this day, but instead just reflect over the suffering of Christ on the cross. No wonder they called it "long" Friday, because how long must it have felt for all the kids who didn't want to sit still? Nowadays, it's just a red letter day, meaning it's a day off work. Kids are on their Easter holiday - one week, either the week before or after Easter - and the weather might or might not remind anyone of ...

It's that time again! Today, we put the clocks forward one hour - in fact, by the time we've woken up today, it will have happened already. In Christian mythos, it's the day where virgin Mary was told she was to become the most famous teenage mum in two millennia. In Sweden, this is called Jungfru Maria bebådelsedag . At some point, this was known as Vårfrudagen (day of our lady), but through some sort of Chinese whispers, it morphed into Våffeldagen (waffle day). Bit of a difference, really. [ Source ] Traditionally, you'd have Swedish waffles with whipped cream and jam. Preferably straight from the waffle iron, so they're crispy and hot. For some reason, my mum has never quite understood why hot, crispy waffles are nicer than cold and spongy ones. They're not pancakes, after all. (Mmm, cold pancakes!)

Shrove Tuesday, you say? Fat Tuesday (fettisdagen) we say! Instead of pancakes, we eat something called a semla. The semla is a cardamom spiced bun (try finding a sweet bun in Sweden that isn't, I dare you) hollowed out and filled with an almond paste, topped with whipped cream, the lid left from the hollowing out and finished with a dusting of icing sugar. The buns I baked yesterday turned out rather small ... so I'm going to pretend it's deliberate and call them "calorie controlled". Today is the "correct day" of eating them, but nowadays, bakeries start making them shortly after Christmas. A little wrong, I think.

Admittedly, I could have gone for the obvious one - Friday the 13th - but seeing as how there's about three of them this year, I thought I'd save it for the next one. Today, there are other things to talk about! On Tjugondedag Knut (twentieth day Knut), it's been twenty days after Christmas, today's name is Knut, and the day means that Christmas is officially over, so it's time to take the festive decorations down and get on with the new year. My parents' tree, Christmas 2010 (haven't transferred the photos of our tree this year from my camera yet)

This is only about a week overdue as the day in question was last Thursday! Trettondagsafton and Trettondagen (last Friday), indeed all of Trettonhelgen (Thursday to Sunday), is what's called Twelfth Night in English. I think it's from when the three kings came to visit Jesus in the stables in Bethlehem, but most Swedes would likely just shrug at that and say "yeah, whatever". We have several holidays based on religion, but as Sweden today is very secular, the days only mean "we don't have to go to work/school today because it's a red day in the calendar". It's common for TV to show a musical farce during this weekend. It runs in the summer, at Fredriksdalsteatern, an open air theatre in Helsingborg in the south of Sweden, and is recorded for TV. When I was growing up, the star of these used to be Nils Poppe, but since he retired, comedienne Eva Rydberg has taken over. She's definitely living up to the expectations he left! Other th...

How a Swede spent last night sort of dictates how Nyårsdagen (New Year's Day) is spent. If you were full up on drink and didn't get to bed until the early hours of the morning, you probably spend most of the day in bed, then take it very easy due to the inevitable hangover you're likely to have. Not so much if you took it easy. There is of course time to start working on those new year's resolutions ... Did you make any? I normally don't, because I don't see the point. Losing weight? Yeah, well, I need to do that regardless of if it's a new year or not. Quit smoking? Never smoked. Exercise more? See the bit about losing weight ... In Britain, if a red letter day falls on a weekend, the holiday is pushed to the next available Monday, so you get it back, meaning tomorrow is a Bank Holiday here. In Sweden, if a red letter day falls on a weekend, tough luck, you don't get it back, meaning today is a Sunday, tomorrow is a normal Monday. I much pref...

This is the first post of this year's theme, which is oh so imaginatively called: Swedish Ways . This is a theme focusing on the year in a Swedish calendar, with all those things we celebrate, when and why, or rather, how . There are a lot more things than eight days of note here, so let's get crackin' with the first one: Nyårsafton , or simply good ol' New Year's Eve in English. Figured it'd be easier to start off with that, rather than writing about New Year's Day tomorrow and having to either wait a year to explain what happened the night before, or having to explain it now and then again in a year's time, so I'm starting a day early, technically. When it comes to Swedes, in all likelihood, New Year's Eve will be spent in one of two ways: Binge drinking at a party or Quiet night at home in front of the telly