Christmas in Sweden, part 2

On the morning before Christmas my Great Grandfather,Johan, would go out into the forest and find a beautiful Christmas tree.  After he cut it down he’d bring it back to their house and the children would decorate it with paper and straw ornaments and homemade presents.  Then they would put real little candles on it.  It would look very pretty when the candles were lit, but they had to be very careful not to catch the tree on fire. 

Because Sweden is so close to the North Pole, Santa, or ‘Jul Tompton’ as he is called in Sweden, stopped there first before he went to give his presents to the rest of the world.  That meant that Swedish children got to open their gifts on Christmas Eve.  They would have a big dinner called a Smorgasbord on Christmas Eve, where they ate all the good things that had been made like the Lutfisk and pepparkakor cookies and limpa bread and little white creamed potatoes and all kinds of cheeses and sandwiches. As they ate and visited they listened for the sound of jingle bells, because that meant Jul Tompton was coming.  He didn’t come on a sleigh pulled by eight tiny reindeer, though. In Sweden, Jul Tompton rides on a goat!

Early on Christmas morning the family would get up, put on their Sunday clothes, and go into town to Church.  It began at 6:00, so it would still be very dark when they got into their sled, and they had to take a torch with them to light the way.  It was very beautiful to see all the other people coming to church, carrying their torches through the dark.  The church would be lighted with hundreds of candles lining the isles.  They would sing Christmas hymns and have a special service.

After church the family would go home and have a good breakfast and then the children could play with their toys.  The next day they would go and visit their friends and bring Christmas goodies to their neighbors.  But Christmas wasn’t over yet, it lasted until the 13^th of January when they would have another party.  Then they had another big dinner, and everyone danced around the Christmas tree and sang.  Then the tree was taken down and put outside in the yard, where they tied bits of dry bread and suet on the branches for the birds to eat.

Don’t you wish you lived in Sweden, and it was still Christmas time?