Since I blogged about the winter solstice in December, I thought I should talk a little about the summer solstice today. Not least since it is the second largest holiday in Sweden. This is the day when the normally so reserved Swedes really let loose.
I understand that midsummer must seem so unbelievably strange to an outsider. We days around a big phallos singing about frogs, rockets and walking around junipear trees doing our laundry. We eat herring and new potatoes and party all night. We also pick 7 flowers to put underneath our pillow so we should dream about the one we are going to marry.
The way we celebrate is a mix of older and newer traditions. The way we celebrate today mostly dates to the end of the 19th and early 20th century. However, the festivities are far older than that.
The midsummer celebration is mentioned already in the Icelandic Sagas from the 13th century and the midsummer pole (originally called may pole) can be traced back as far as the christianisation. It is decorated with leaves and flowers to celebrate all things that grow.
We do not really know for sure for how long we've celebrated midsummer in Sweden, but it is described in Historia om de nordiska folken (History of the Nordic people) which dates back to the 16th century. Back then it was celebrated on the day of John the baptist (23 June) every year. From 1953 however, it has always been celebrated on the Friday and this year it happens to be on that day.
I do not find it so surprising that our biggest holidays are Christmas and midsummer. Living here you really notice the contrasts between the seasons. The winters are dark and cold and the summers bright and warm. Of course we want to celebrate the turning towards a brighter existence in the darkest of winter and of course we want to celebrate the time when it is the brightest too. I love the fact that Norse mythology deals with these contrasts with the cold and dark and the light and warm. It was created in the special situation we have living up here and I think this is one of the reasons why Christianity has never really been able to claim the midsummer night. It still feel a bit magic.
There is a lot to say about the christmas traditions and their history and I could spend this Christmas Eve post on talking about how the Scandinavian languages have word for Christmas that derive from one of Odin's many names Jólnir. How the earliest known celebration of the birth of Jesus in the Coptic church in Egypt in the 3rd century AD was in the beginning of May and how the celebration was moved to it's current place in December due to Pagan celebrations of the winter solstice, when Christianity gained power in the Roman Empire.
I could also talk about weird Swedish traditions like eating the pagan pig Särimner every christmas. Or that we are all watching the Disney christmas special originally called From all of us, but which we call Kalle Anka (Donald Duck) at three o'clock every Christmas Eve. Or what a total uproar it becomes if Disney or SVT tries changing even one second of that show...
But I am not going to do so. This because I find it better and more important nowadays to talk about Charles Dickens's classical book A Christmas Carol. The book was published in 1843 but its message is still important to reflect upon.
A Christmas Carol tells the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a greedy and selfish buisness man.
Oh, but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner. Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips bue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry ching. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days, and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas. External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty.
Scrooge's selfishness is clear in the description of him in the first stave (as the chapters are called in the book. An influence from the music world like the title of the novella itself also is.). He does not care for anyone or anything and is too trapped in himself that not even the weather can affect him. His cold inner nature is also clearly demonstrated by his outer one. He is mean and uncaring to everyone.
One Christmas night, he is visited by the ghost of his 7-years-dead buisness partner Jacob Marley. Marley tells him that he will be visited by three ghosts that will try to make him change his ways so he will not be doomed to haunt around the world regretting his choice not to care about others after death like himself.
'Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask', said Scrooge looking intently at the Spirit's robe, 'but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?' 'It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it', was the Spirit's sorrowful reply. 'Look here!' From the foldings of its robe it brought two children, wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment. 'O man! look here! Look, look down here!' exclaimed the Ghost. They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish, but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched thm with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared outo menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half as horrible and dread. Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude. 'Spirit! are they yours?' Scrooge could say no more. 'They are Man's' said the Spirit, looking down upon them. 'And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware of them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. (---)'
The three ghosts turns out to be: The ghost of Christmas past, The ghost of Christmas present and The ghost of Christmas yet to come. They have a different lesson to teach Scrooge about the importance of self-reflection, of empathy and compassion and of long-term thinking. In a world where people strives to live in the present, not reflecting on memories of the past nor of what consequences their action will have on the future, A Christmas Carol is just as an important lesson today, when the boy and girl accompanying The ghost of Christmas present grows ever stronger and when the sake of goodness, empathy and compassion are seen as something naive and bad. But there is hope. Like Scrooge, one always deserves a second chance to correct ones way of living.
Nathan Page as Jack Robinson in Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
In the Swedish calendar almost all days have at least one name which celebrate its so called Name Day. Apparently this is a Greek-Orthodox and Roman-Catholic tradition going back to their tradition with Saint's days. Why it is left in Sweden which has been a protestant country since the 16th century, I have no idea.
Anyway, today the calendar says Natanael, which is a Swedish version of the name Nathan and of course I was thinking about Nathan Page who plays Jack Robinson in Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. So I wanted to celebrate him with this post.
Apparently the name is Hebrew and means Gift from God.
So, today is known as the Lucia day in Sweden. Of course I could tell you how we celebrate it, but that is much better explained in this video
Every year on social media, this tradition is said to be under threat. From what is often quite unclear, but it has been a decline in interest for public Lucia competitions and I have a theory as to why. But first I feel a need to talk about the history of the tradition.
"Sankta Lucia. Ljusklara hägring. Sprid i vår vinternatt, glans av din fägring "(Saint Lucia, Bright mirage. Spread in our winter's night, gloss of your beauty.)
~ Sankta Lucia
Lucia is a variation of the Latin word Lux which means light and in the Julian calendar, 13th of December was the winter solstice and therefore the night was the longest one of the year. According to folklore, a lot of bad spirits were roaming around during this night and legend tells of a demon-like woman called Lussi or Lussekärringen (in the province Västergötland the legend instead speaks of man called Lussegubben though)who came riding together with her followers called lussiferda. It was also a night when the animals started to talk.
Everyone can be a lucia!
Lucia is a Sicilian saint in the Roman-Catholic church who lived in Syracuse during the 4th century AD. However, the Swedish Lucia celebration (which today has spread to the Finno-Swedish population of Finland, Norway and Denmark) has little to do with her. The celebration is actually a mix of both Christian and Pagan traditions. Lucia marked the beginning of the christmas celebrations and in the past it was thought that the preparations needed to be finished by then. Swedes celebrated this by eating and drinking a little extra. The 13th of December was also the day when Swedes slaughtered the so called christmas pig to make the ham which is one of the major dishes in the Swedish christmas dinner. The christmas pig is thought of as to symbolise the pig Särimner from Norse mythology. Särimner is the pig who gets slaughtered every evening in Odin's hall Valhalla, but resurrects every morning just to get slaughtered (and eaten) again by the dead warriors.
The modern Lucia celebration is thought to have its origin in Western Sweden (in the regions kring the lake Vänern in the provinces Dalsland, Bohuslän, Västergötland and Värmland). From there, male students (since there were no female ones at that time) spread it to Uppsala and Lund where they went to university in the late 18th and early 19th century. There they held Lucia performances for their professors. Yes, traditionally it has been common with a male Lucia!
Lussekatter
Saffron buns called lussekatter (translated directly it is "lusse cats") are served during Lucia. This is a German tradition dating back to the 17th century where a legend said that the devil (sometimes refered to as Lucifer) went around as a cat spanking children. At the same time, Jesus went around offering buns to the children. They were stuffed with saffron to ward off the devil from the light colour.
"Staffan var en stalledräng. Vi tackom nu så gärna. Han vattna' sina fålar fem. Allt för den ljusa stjärna. Ingen dager synes än. Stjärnorna på himmelen de blänka."(Staffan was a stable boy. We gladly thank how now. He watered his five horses. Everything for the bright star. No day can yet be seen. The stars in the sky they glitter.)
~ Sankta Lucia
Stjärngossar
Except for Lucia, there are a, traditionally male, character in the Lucia celebration called stjärngosse (star boy). The tradition with this character is actually related to dramatized versions of the birth of Jesus during Twelth Night when the Three Wise Men reach the stable where Jesus is supposed to have been born. Since Twelth Night has losts its importance in Sweden, we have somehow chosen to put stjärngossarna into the Lucia celebration instead. Unfortunatelly, I have not been able to find any answer to the question why this change occured or why they sing the Medieval ballad about king Herod's stable boy Stefanus: Staffan var en stalledräng, but I guess it is just one of those things that happened when traditions adapts to a new reality.
I think it is very important that we actually study from where traditions like the Lucia celebrations come and even more to see how it has changed over time. I have talked about my view on culture as always ongoing negotiatons of sociability before in my entries about the Samish hat adorned with Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and chess. Considering all the memes and discussion there is every christmas about the "threatened" Lucia tradition I think Lucia is actually a great illustration for this. The Lucia celebration will change with time. That thing is clear! Every tradition does and it is totally natural. The celebration still has social value though. It is still extremely popular in schools and work places and such all over Sweden. There has been a decline in "official" Lucia competitions however, but I would not say that this has anything to do with Lucia celebration itself. Instead I think it has to do with the similarities between Lucia competitions and beauty pageants. The latter seems to have lost its social value in Sweden in later years which I think actually is something that we should be happy about.
Lucia celebration, the cat version
Picture of the lussekatter was borrowed from here.
