Swedish Christmas Shownotes

The start of Christmas

The Swedish Christmas starts on the 1st of Advent, four Sundays before Christmas Eve, and we lit the first candle in our advent calendar. This is a 4 candle holder often decorated with green moss and red berries, and on the first Sunday of Advent we lit the first candle, enjoy some fika, often with glögg ( a hot mulled wine served with almonds and raisins) some gingerbread cookies, and some s-shaped saffron buns.
After the fika, the candle is blown out after just burning down a little bit, and on Sunday 2 we do the same thing but this time lighting the first and second candle, and so forth. 

On the first of December, the TVs julkalender (Christmas calendar) show starts. This is a show for kids, that has a new episode every night until Christmas Eve. Each year has a different julkalender, and in combination with the TV show, you can buy a paper calendar on the theme of the show, where the kids follow along and open one window each day. This tradition started in 1960.

The next big event comes on December 13th when we celebrate Lucia. I talked a lot about Lucia in my last episode but let me share some personal memories of Lucia celebration with you. 

I grow up in a suburb to Stockholm, and at that time this was the most child-concentrated community in the whole of Sweden. We lived in an 8 story apartment building with two apartments per floor. At each entrance, there were 16 apartments, and in those about 30 kids. 

Each Lucia we practiced and prepared for weeks so we got out Lucia procession together and walked to all apartments and sang for all the parents. 

Although all my school years, from kindergarten to college, I have watched or been part of the Lucia procession, in fat this is so important so if Lucia fell on a Saturday or Sunday, the schools celebrated on Friday or Monday.
After that, I became a teacher, and Lucia was once again an important part of preparing for Christmas, a part that I miss a lot. 

The holidays of Christmas

Now we are getting closer to the Christmas days so let me give you an overview of the days; 

Christmas Eve, December 24th, is the most important day of them all, this is when Santa comes and visits when we get our gifts, and when we eat our julbord, a special version of a smorgasbord.

Christmas Day and the second day of Christmas are both official holidays in Sweden and most people are off from work. 

But before we take a closer look at any of these days we must start on the night of December 23, which we call uppesittarkväll, (sit-up-night).
Uppesittarkvällen is when you prepare everything, make sure you finish up your cooking, wrap your last gifts, get the Christmas decorations finished, and most important dress the tree.
And talking about gift wrapping, we have a tradition in Sweden of writing rhymes with our Christmas gifts. These rhymes should hint at the content in the gift without revealing the content. 

When I was a kid this was the night when you were tossing and turning in bed, knowing that you were not allowed to get out of bed if you wanted Santa to come and give you gifts. Our tree was never decorated until I and my brothers were in bed, which made the morning of Christmas Eve special, waking up extra early to see the tree and all the presents underneath for the first time. 

But back to uppesittarkväll, during the 1980s they started to have a uppesittarkvällon TV. The TV show had different artist entertaining, rhyme shops where you could call in and get help from professional writers to create your rhymes on your gifts, last-minute decoration and cooking tips, and much much more.

Christmas Eve

So now let’s take a look at December 24th Julafton in Swedish. I will talk both about traditions and food today, but of course, this may vary depending on what part of Sweden you are from and your own family traditions. But most of the things I will mention here today are known as Swedish Christmas traditions. 

In my family growing up, it started with us kids waking up early as I mentioned running into the living room and looking at the tree and all the presents. Of course, we wanted to 

Dive into the gifts right away, but we were only allowed to pick one gift to open in the morning. 

Then we, and most of everyone in Sweden have a very difficult decision to make, and that is, food and gifts before or after???
Before or after what you may ask, and this is a little tricky to explain without us Swedes looks like fools but I will try;

At 3 PM on Christmas Eve we all gather in front of the TV to watch the Disney show From all of Us to all of You or as we call it in Sweden Kalle Anka och hans vänner önskar God Jul Which translated is Donald Duck and his friends wish you a Merry Christmas.
The show aired for the first time in 1959. Most of the show contains the same segments each year with one or two clips from the latest Disney movies.
The reoccurring shorts are;

• Santa’s Workshop
• Clown of the Jungle
• Pluto’s Christmas Tree
• Mickey’s Trailer
• Ferdinand the Bull

Plus scenes from the following movies;

• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
• Cinderella
• Lady and the Tramp
• The Jungle Book
• Robin Hood

The presenter of the show is Jiminy Cricket.

During this hour Sweden is at a stand-still, no one is cooking, opening gifts, or hardly even talking to each other. 

And the question I referred to earlier is
Should we eat and open presents before or after Kalle Anka?
In my family, we usually ate after Kalle Anka and after that, it was time for gifts.

Christmas food

So let’s take a look at a typical Swedish julbord, which is a variation of a typical Swedish smörgåsbord, julbord just means a Christmas table.
We don’t eat turkey for Christmas, so the main attraction here is the Swedish Christmas ham ( a boiled ham that later is glazed with egg, mustard, and bread crumbs) usually only eaten cold, besides the ham you might find some or all of these dishes;

Pickled herring in several variations, herring salad, Janssons frestelse (Jansson’s temptation) a casserole made with Potatoes, onions, anchovies, cream, and bread crumbs, meatballs, prince sausages ( a smaller beef sausage) liver pate, ribs, beat salad, potatoes, red cabbage, wort bread ( a dark bread made with wort and beer) dopp i grytan (dip in the pot) where you take the wort bread and dip it in the heated broth from boiling the ham, lutfisk ( tried cod preserved in lye, then watered out before cooking) served with a white sauce (not as common anymore), rice pudding ( and for some extra fun we add one almond to the rice pudding and the one that gets the almond is said to get married during the next year) 

To drink we have Christmas beer, snaps, julmust ( a soda sold during Christmas and sometimes Easter but then called Påskmust (easter must)), Glögg a hot mulled wine served with almonds and raisins, 

After dinner it is finally time for opening gifts. Often Santa is knocking on the door and asks; Finns det några snälla barn här? Are there any nice children here?
When I was a kid we usually had a friend of my parents, someone that wasn’t celebrating Christmas with us, dress up as Santa so no one was missing, and still Santa was in the room so he must be real. He never stayed for long, just read the tags on the gifts and handed them out, before he had to run to the next family.
In my family, we then took turns opening the gifts and reading the rhymes if there were any. That way we all could see what everyone got. 

Christmas Day and the Second day of Christmas are as I said earlier official holidays in Sweden, some people like to go to church early on Christmas day for what we call julotta jul = Christmas and otta = dawn, usually around 7 AM.
The rest of the two days are used to enjoy your family and relax. 

Christmas ends

The official end of the Christmas season is January 13th, or as we call it Tjugondag Knut, which is 20 days after Christmas Eve.  This day you have julgransplundring (Christmas tree looting) a party for kids that includes dancing around the tree before it is time for undressing it. The tree traditionally included decorations filled with candy just for this event, but nowadays the kids usually get a candy bag instead. And with that the Christmas is over until the first of Advent, four Sundays before Christmas again. 

And with this, I have reached the end of my first season on A Swedish Fika. A big thank you to everyone that has listened. I will be back in January again, but for now, there is only one thing to say;

God Jul och Gott Nytt År / Merry Christmas and a happy new year