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Tag archives for Holidays

You’re Celebrating on the Wrong Day!—and other things you didn’t know about Christmas in Sweden

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It’s the night before Christmas, and all through the mouse, not a beach chair is stirring, not even a louse.

Wait, what!?!

Celebrating Christmas abroad can make you feel like things are, well, a little topsy-turvy.

You may have read about the way people celebrate in the country you’re living in, or you might be going into the day free of any knowledge or misconceptions. Regardless of which category you fall under, there will come a point in the day when you look around you and think to yourself:

Now what exactly is going on here?

Last week, I was invited to be on a radio show with two Swedish comedians to talk about the differences between American and Swedish Christmas traditions as I perceived them. I had some thoughts at that time, but now that I’ve actually experienced my first Christmas in Sweden, I’m ready to tell it like it is.

You’re celebrating on the wrong day Read more » >>

Kate Reuterswärd - Expat

December 27, 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

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

It’s, like, National Day or whatever

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A lot of my posts over the last couple of months have had something to do with holidays, which might give you the impression that this country has a lot of random celebrations. This impression would be 100% true.

Not only that, there is an incredible number of Christian holidays in this ambivalent-towards-religion country. For example, last Thursday was Kristi Himmelsfärds Dag, or Ascension Day in English. This holiday celebrates, as we all know, the ascension of Jesus into heaven, which occurred forty days after he rose from the dead on Easter. As far as I can tell, the biggest celebrations taking place that day were by university students who had finished their last exams the day before—not the most pious of celebrations, might I add.

Most adorable baby in Swedish folk costume ever! Photo from littlescandinavian.com


Fast forward to today: National Day. I’m imagining fireworks, parades, marching bands, orchestrated explosions…

Not so much. I’ve asked a lot of friends about National Day–what it means and how they’ll celebrate–and the response has been the equivalent of a collective “Meh.” People are not that into it! Not exactly what I expected.

As it turns out, National Day is one of the few holidays in Sweden without much history or tradition. It only became an official holiday in 2005, which is part of why people are at a loss as to how to celebrate it. No one grew up with it, and it seems a little forced in comparison to all the other longstanding holidays. Before 2005, National Day was just called “Flag Day,” and you didn’t get time off from work for it, which obviously means its not much of a holiday.

As for the date, usually chosen for meaningful reasons, it commemorates both the election of Gustav Vasa as King in 1523, which “laid the foundation of Sweden as an independent state,” and the ratification of the 1809 Constitution, which established civil rights and liberties. Both fine things, but sort of lacking the punch and rah-rah value of, say, kicking the British back across the Atlantic, storming the Bastille, or something of that nature.

Plus, for some reason Swedish people seem a little skeptical of the whole “overt nationalism” thing that goes along with a national day. It’s one thing to get all “Well, yes, we solved poverty and invented Skype and if only you would let us be in charge of the UN we could probably fix the world too.” It’s another to march around saying “Boo-yah Sweden.” I don’t quite follow the reasoning, but when you are persistent in asking questions about this you hear some mutters about right wing parties and not wanting to be associated with bad people. It seems like there’s this quietly-enforced restraint in celebrating “Swedishness” too vehemently.

By far the most exciting part for me are the folk dresses. The royal family always celebrates in Stockholm, and Queen Silvia totally rocks a Swedish folk dress. Thank goodness for Lola being in Stockholm to document the royal family Swedish folk dress mania… wish I could have been there to see it myself. Instead, I just got to daydream about the dress I’m going to buy my poor first born when the time comes. How cute is that little baby??

Kate Reuterswärd - Expat

June 6, 2011

Waffle Day: The Good, the Bad, and the Sold Out

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Imagine you live in a magical, far-away land. A land clothed in graceful swathes of Lollipop Woods and Gumdrop Mountains, populated by chocolate monsters and gingerbread people. Imagine a world where licorice is king and waffles get their own holiday… Oh wait. Sorry, that’s Sweden.

In a totally improbable turn of events, Sweden celebrates “Waffle Day”—an unofficial holiday whose sole reason for existing is a phonetic mix-up—on March 25. This year, my Waffle Day (or Våffeldagen) started in Swedish class. At that point, I wasn’t even aware of the significance of the seemingly-ordinary Friday. What a fool I was! An innocent! A naïve!

Fortunately, my Swedish class is not exactly, shall we say, “goal-oriented,” so we spent quite a bit of time discussing Waffle Day and its history in Sweden. Waffle Day was never intended to be a holiday as such, but March 25 is nine months before Christmas, and therefore a feast day for the Holy Mary. In Swedish, “Our Lady” is “Vår Fru,” and if you mumble determinedly enough, “Vår Fru” sounds a lot like “Våfflor,” which means waffles. Vår Fru Dagen becomes Våfflor Dagen, and all of a sudden Sweden has a Waffle Day.

Being the foreigner that I am, I find all this a little difficult to grasp. Like, you mean to tell me that people just started mispronouncing the name of a religious holiday en masse, and then they just kept going with it? Did they all just collectively say, “Meh. I like waffles better than church anyway?” Is this really possible?

I don’t know what the opposite of “the heights of religious fervor” is, but I think that Waffle Day comes pretty close.

I’ve also read that Swedes celebrate Waffle Day because it’s spring and back in the olden days, they were happy to finally have fresh milk and eggs, but I’m not sure I really believe that. If that were true, it could be “Practically Any Freshly-Baked Bread-like Item Day.” Plus, the Waffle/Our Lady thing seems a lot more convincing.

After discussing the Waffle Day situation for almost a half hour in class, we were instructed to write an essay on whether men or women drive better, and since I don’t really feel that passionately about the topic, I spent most of the next hour and a half thinking about waffles.

I rallied the troops—two other American girls with Swedish boyfriends—and we went off in search of a Real Cultural Experience. Unfortunately, we met with more disappointment than success. We went to Ebbas Skafferi, a really great café and coffee spot in Lund where I was sure they would have waffles. After confirming that they were on the menu for the day, we each ordered one… only to be told that the Swedish waffles had been sold out for the day and that all they were currently serving were Belgian waffles. The horrors!

Our Belgian waffles did not meet expectations.

We’re not that picky, so we ate them anyway. It felt a little wrong, though.

Waffles! A Real Cultural Experience! (Almost.)

Fortunately, I was soon able to rectify the Belgian waffle snafu. Our friends Gustaf and Malin invited us over for dinner on Saturday, and in honor of an extended Waffle Day weekend, they suggested that we have waffles for dessert. I got unreasonably excited (At last! Real Swedish Waffles!), and then Malin and Gustaf realized that they weren’t really sure where their waffle press was since they just moved. They started going through some boxes, but to no avail. Not being the type to give up, though, they decided to just buy a new one so that we could go through with the plan.

Malin didn't let a silly thing like not having a waffle iron stand in her way.

At last! Real Swedish waffles! A day late, but just as delicious as expected.

 

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To see some photos of “real Swedish waffles” with an American twist, check out Lola Akinmade Åkerström’s “Chicken and Waffles, Swedish Style,” also from blogs.sweden.se.

Kate Reuterswärd - Expat

March 28, 2011