Christmas Eve, Swedish Style

Christmas to me is many things. It’s belting out Christmas songs the day after Thanksgiving, coming home to the smell of apple cider simmering on the stove, and watching hours upon hours of awful romantic Christmas movies with my mom while folding laundry. Christmas is wearing ancient Santa hats to school accompanied by ugly sweaters and dreams full of peppermint and the upcoming winter break. Christmas is family. It is also waiting until the last minute to wrap an ever-growing pile of presents, and boxes of bandaids to cover up the papercuts from said wrapping paper. It is the realization that I desperately have to cut back on gingerbread cookie intake according to the fit of my jeans. There are good and bad sides to every holiday, but that’s what makes them special. Being in Sweden over this holiday season, I was able to find new things that mean Christmas to so many people. It’s a jarring feeling knowing that out of all of your family and friends at home, you may be the only one who knows about something that seems so normal and everyday in another country. That’s why I’m sharing how Christmas is celebrated in Sweden with everyone back home, and around the world who would like to know more about it. Christmas, known as Jul in Sweden officially starts on First Advent. First Advent is always on the fourth Sunday from Christmas, or the Sunday that falls closest to the 30th of November. The next four weeks are filled with Jul festivities throughout Sweden. A popular tradition that you will see in most households are advent candles. On the first Sunday of Advent, the first candle is lit. Over the weeks, as each of the four candles are lit, they create a slope with the oldest candle being the shortest and the last candle being the tallest. It’s especially exciting for children as they are able to visualize and anticipate Christmas eve coming closer and closer. Along with the four traditional advent candles atop every dinner table, you can also spot a row of electric candles in every windowsill. Stars are also commonly seen in windows. I am used to every house being rimmed with colorful strands of lights back in Alaska, but I liked this change in decorations. Sweden's way of decorating is a little bit more traditional, but you can still find the occasional house covered in a flashing, Christmas-themed strobe light extravaganza. Other decorations you will find in the average Swedish household include lots of Tomten, Santas. I find these small gnome like figures especially charming when they can be seen peeking outside from window sills. The classic Tomten doll has a tall hat with a nose and long white or grey beard peeking out from underneath. My favorite decoration of all is The Yule goat. It is a goat of any size constructed out of straw wrapped in red ribbon. I love it not just because of how it looks, but because of the story behind a very famous Christmas tradition: The Gävle Goat, or Gävlebocken. Every year since 1966, a giant straw goat has been built in the city square of Gävle, Sweden. The first year that it was built, it was burned down on New Year’s Eve, thus creating a tradition of vandalizing and attempting to destroy the goat in any means necessary, usually by fire. Ways in which the goat has been destroyed include fire, being smashed apart, hit by a car, and one year it was even stolen. On the rare years that the goat survives until New Years, the town, and Sweden rejoice. The goat of 2017 thankfully survived due to amped up security and doubled fences. Here is a complete timeline of the Gävle Goats life and deaths. Christmas in the US is generally celebrated on Christmas day, but in Sweden, they celebrate it all on the night before. Instead of opening presents on Christmas morning, they are opened any time during the day on Christmas Eve. My host family and I opened ours before lunch. It was a nice change from getting up at 7 am and groggily, yet still excited, opening presents. After a couple of hours, my host family and I left to spend Christmas with my host mom’s parents, or you could say, my host grandparents. We arrived just in time to watch something that I had been hearing about non-stop for the past month. At 3pm on Christmas Eve, most of Sweden gathers in front of their televisions to watch Kalle Anka, Donald Duck. I was just as confused as anyone would expect. The program was a hour long and included antique classic clips, including Donald Duck, and Mickey Mouse, but also had excerpts from Disney’s Cinderella, Robin Hood, and The Jungle Book, just to name a few. The program remains relatively the same from year to year except at the end where they show movie clips from upcoming Disney films, or Disney films that were recently released. This year, we got to see a short clip from Disney’s Coco, and part of Olaf's Frozen Adventure, a spin off of the movie Frozen. While watching, we drank Glögg and I realized that out of every everyone at the party, I was probably the only one actually paying attention. Even my seven year old host sister had seen it so many times that her interest had waned. When Kalle Anka was over, we all headed down to eat the traditional Swedish dinner. After a delicious three course dinner and dessert, it was time for Santa to come for a visit. In my host family, every year at their Christmas party, Santa comes and pays a visit for all the children in the house. He was warmly welcomed at the front door by the youngest and eagerly led downstairs to where the presents were. Then the children took turns handing him presents. Santa would read who the gift was from and who it was for and then you would go up and grab your present. After everyone had their presents we had to wait a little bit longer so that we could all get a picture with Santa. Anyone who isn’t a parent was considered young enough to surround Santa for the pictures. After an onslaught of pictures we waved goodbye to Santa and finally got to open our presents. The room quickly filled with torn wrapping paper and bows as shrieks of joy came from the smaller children and words of thanks were exchanged between the gift givers and receivers. We ended the night with hugs and wished each other a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year while lugging out our presents. That night I called my own family and wished them a very Merry Christmas even though it was only Christmas Eve morning back in Alaska due to the time difference. Afterwards I went to bed with visions of Donald Duck dancing in my head.