Seasons and Spirit of Some Swedish Sacraments

First published on December 26, 2013, here it is again as we wrap up a beautiful holiday season!!

Ladies giving out free Glugg (mulled wine--warm and sweet) along with PapparKakkor (paper thin ginger cookies).  This is a common site around Christmas time, and it always warms the heart!!

In the US, the tradition was modern.  Not modern to the US, but modern!  And so, much of it has become commercial.  Starts with New Year party hats, party favors, balloons, candles and plastic champagne glasses being sold.  Parties around New Years are organized –and very few question that seriously New Year could start any day of the year. 

Hand made Wreaths being sold in town: Karlstad, Sweden.  Can you smell the cinnamon? 

Eld Konst:  The Fire Festival, one of the newest creations.  Only 12 years old, if continued this might become a well anticipated tradition during the coldest time of the year.  Karlstad, Sweden, December 2013

Funnily enough, in a country like India where we have nearly two dozen New Year celebrations, we still continue to go crazy on December 31^st.  

In the US, before the new year is even a week old, red, pink and chocolates grace the store windows reminding us, that love ‘must’ be in the air.  Just when you are done gulping the last sip of wine, after your romantic date, you walk out to see all green—all four leaf clover—waving a St. Patrick’s Day in.  And you have probably not even arrived at your number for the long que for green beer when Easter eggs are bouncing around us---then there is mother’s day, memorial day, father’s day, July 4^th---you get the picture.

All right, so what is with traditions? Are traditions all created? Contrived? Just to commercialize every little emotion?

Probably.  But many traditions were created and then pursued mainly for one reason, to allow for a break in monotony of life while allowing for continuity, and a sense of anticipation every year.  We look forward to celebrated traditions; we come up with new ways of honoring them, and often have something special planned that forces us to conduct our everyday life--in a different way—for weeks.   Planning can call for shopping, cooking special meals, visiting special people.  And that can take a few weeks or more.

Traditions and celebrations also call for a large gathering, and so friends and families get together, acknowledge each other with phone calls and cards and gift exchanges, or sometimes special gestures, like visiting a grave, lighting a candle.  Celebrations are also a time when many can feel a sense of abundance as well as a sense of aloneness, if they do not feel part of a large group—a tribe. 

Regardless, these yearly celebrations, the ones that are celebrated all over the country, become important to us.  So, when you do not belong to the majority it can create a time of ‘identity crisis’ for many.  Unless you are a crazy one like me, who brings out Christmas lights around the time of festival of lights (Indian festival of Deepwali or Diwali)—which often arrives at least six weeks before Christmas, and does not take the lights down until a few days after new year celebration.

So, the yearly, nation wide celebrations are significant because they raise the country’s vibration to another level, even those who do not belong to that tradition can feel the joy.  Commercial or not –these reminders in the store windows, in our email boxes and even Google’s look, get us in the mood.  We can resist it, we can question it, but we cannot overlook that there is something magical about having one large festival in our hearts.  It is felt collectively, all over the country if not many countries.  I knew I had a completely different experience of 'Diwali' when I lived in Fiji.  It is this collective energy that gets us into the ‘spirit’ of the season. 

There are a few entries on this blog under Swedish Traditions that are devoted to specifically to Swedish cultural heritage.  These traditions, though very specific to the land, are also either a bit religious or seasonal –which share the concepts and ideas from many other holidays and celebrations around the world.  The focus on these entries is on learning a bit more about Sweden and than just placing that in the collective ‘celebratory spirit of our planet’. 

Stay tuned, I plan on focussing a little more on Scandinavian traditions in general