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Tag archives for Christmas

St. Knut’s Day (Tjugondag Knut): The most confusing and least-appreciated Swedish holiday ever

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Last Friday was Friday the 13th, and with the exception of an extremely unlucky Italian cruise ship, the day passed like many others. Work, grocery shopping, På Spåret, and then sleep, heavenly sleep.

The special thing about last Friday, January 13, passed almost completely unnoticed, even in this country that loves holidays. There were no themed pastries, no advertising campaigns, no trivia quizzes in the free newspaper you get on the train. It’s like the whole country was totally unaware of the significance of this holy day, Tjugondag Knut, the official end of the Christmas season.

Tjugondag Knut translates into “20th Day Knut,” which refers to the 20th day after Christmas Eve. This used to be the day when Swedes, Finns, and Norwegians would ransack the tree of the candy and cookies it had been adorned with before Christmas and then kick it to the curb, so to speak. Now it seems to be widely forgotten, and if you ask me, it’s kind of a pity, because St. Knut’s Day is one strange but awesome holiday.

Sadly, there was no plundering our Christmas tree this year because by the time Tjugondag Knut came around, it was dry as a match and dead as a doornail. We threw it out the window and all the needles fell off. Photo: Kate Reuterswärd

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Kate Reuterswärd - Expat

January 15, 2012

35 Essential Swedish Words for Christmas

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Celebrating Christmas in a foreign country is tough, right? You miss your family. You have no idea what’s going on. To top it off, Swedes can’t even figure out what day they’re supposed to celebrate on. The whole thing is cockamamie.

Fortunately, even though this is my first Christmas in Sweden, I’ve had some practice with Sweden’s other holidays, namely Springtime Christmas (Easter), Summertime Christmas (Midsummer), and Patriotic Christmas (National Day).

These holidays have been wonderfully rich experiences, yielding both memories that I’ll treasure forever and valuable coping strategies for situations in which the rules of play are unknown and running away is not an option.

Coping strategy number one: Focus on the food.

Coping strategy number two:  Do not be afraid of the wine.

Coping strategy number three: Study the relevant holiday vocabulary in advance.

Seriously. It doesn’t matter how lovely and wonderful your significant other is or how unafraid you are of asking for explanations, by the time you interrupt a conversation mid-flow for the tenth time to ask what a word means, you will feel like an idiot and want to slink off to a corner to hide for the rest of the day.

Either that, or you and I do not react to this kind of stress in the same way, in which case, you probably do not these coping strategies in the first place.

In any case, how you handle the day once it’s upon you is out of my hands. What I can help you with, though, are the words. Read more » >>

Kate Reuterswärd - Expat

December 22, 2011

Happy Lucia Day!

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Happy Lucia Day from Sweden, where you’re never more than two months away from a major holiday, and only a few thousand years separate a beautiful modern tradition from a brutal (and widely forgotten) historical event.

Around the country today, parents were woken up by their children dressed in white and serving them breakfast in bed. (This holiday will most definitely be celebrated in our family when, a very long time from now, we have kids.) Then it’s off to school, where the children will participate in at least one Lussetåg, or Lucia Parade. They may even visit hospitals and local businesses, and many children’s choirs do public performances in the local churches, which will probably see as much or more public on Lucia Day as they will on Christmas or Easter.

I have to admit, from an outsider’s perspective, the Lussetåg looks like a slightly cultish Halloween parade. Both the boys and the girls are dressed all in white, but the girls wear wreaths on their heads and carry candles while the boys have bedazzled cone-shaped hats perched on their heads and carry what look like wands with stars shooting out of them. The boys look a lot like Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice… magic wizards! Read more » >>

Kate Reuterswärd - Expat

December 13, 2011

Christmas time in Sweden: THERE WILL BE GLÖGG!

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In a country filled with seasonal food holiday traditions, I have discovered the tradition to rule them all. The celebration centers on a certain group of foods and drink, but the focus is much more on the Christmas feeling tied to the smells and tastes than the food itself. You will know it by its name and the sound it makes as it goes down your throat:

Glug, glug, glögg! Read more » >>

Kate Reuterswärd - Expat

December 5, 2011

ALERT! Test yourself for these symptoms of Holiday Spirit Fever

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THIS BLOG IS CURRENTLY QUARANTINED DUE TO EXTREMELY CONTAGIOUS FEVER. TEST YOURSELF.

A fever has hit Sweden. (No, not the one I caught last week that turned me into a whimpering, slobbering mess for three days.) I’m talking about the fever of HOLIDAY SPIRIT that has infected all my friends and, inevitably, me. It’s a contagion, I tell you! An epidemic!

It was back in September that I first heard the rumblings of something momentous headed my way. I ignored that creeping sense of unease, however, and continued on in my daily life, unaware that there was an actual date when all these symptoms lurking beneath the surface would converge and erupt in a massive display of HOLIDAY SPIRIT FEVER. Read more » >>

Kate Reuterswärd - Expat

November 28, 2011