Jultradition in Sweden

Christmas, or Jul is quite a big part of Sweden's tradition.  The closer you get to December, the more you notice Christmas decorations in the stores.  Red and white seem to be the colours of the month and tomten, the Swedish Santa, is everywhere.  Stores also start selling Christmas related wares - decorations, household stuff, toys and Christmas gift baskets.  God Jul, which is the traditional Christmas greeting, is printed on anything from mugs and plates to napkins and cushions.

Households here also begin to decorate their homes with everything red and white and Christmassy.  Two of the more popular decoration items for the window are the elljusstake which is a 7-candle candelabra and the julstjärna which is a 7-pointed star lantern.  Since it gets dark very early in winter, the lights from these decorations make the homes look so cosy.  I love looking out my window to look at my neighbours' windows.  In the dark, the glow from the candles and lanterns make the evening look friendly, homely and cosy.

The first of December marks the start of the Christmas countdowns.  These are marked by Advent candles which come in a set of four.  Each candle signifies a week and the four candles mark the four weeks before Christmas.  You light one candle at the start of Advent, which is calculated to be four weeks before Christmas.  You let it burn down a little.  Then you light this and the second candle on the second Advent and so on.

There is also another popular countdown item called the Julcalendar.  These come in many forms.  The most popular one is the chocolate calendar.  The chocolates are hidden behind windows that are numbered between 1 and 24.  You open one window a day, starting from 1 December.  Other similar calendars could be made up of a set of 24 tiny packages containing items such as candy or stickers.  So the children get to open one small present a day. 

We don't celebrate Christmas but it's hard not to be swept by the Christmas mood here.  Our home is bare of any decoration but looking at how nice the lights and candles look, perhaps next time I will get nice candles to light up during the dark winter days. 

Anyway, we bought a chocolate julcalendar for ourselves.  This calendar is also fun as there are messages on the windows as well.  The messages are reminders for tasks to be done before Christmas.  For fun, we decided to follow what was written on ours if we could. As a result of that, I made pepparkakor, or gingerbread cookies yesterday for the first time.  I loved it. The dough was easy to make and bake.  And most importantly, they taste good. I will do another batch soon but this time I will make gingerbread men.  If that works, I'll post the recipe too.  Now, I'm going to munch on more of the cookies!