Swedish traditions

New year’s Eve

In Sweden the most of the people celebrate New Year’s Eve with one’s families or friends, we eat tasty food and have fun. Many young teenagers drink very much this night and are very drunk. We even like to light fireworks and when the bell call we celebrate it with champagne and says cheers! , One good thing here in Sweden is that you can’t bay fireworks if you’re younger than 18 years old. That’s because many people get hurts. New year in Sweden is the first day in January. The tradition comes from a very old time; it all goes back to Julius Caesar. Julius made the Julian calendar and he decided the New Year should be at January 1.

Another thing many do here is to promise “new years promise” then you decide something you should changes for the next year, for example like loose weight, start practice, stop smoke, stop drinking or get a job and something like that is the usually promise here in Sweden. And every year on this time you can go to the town and look at fireworks if you don’t want to bought your own, because Luleå municipality fix that.


Easter

Easter in Sweden, according a decision that took in a church meeting year 325 decide that Easter invade at the first Sunday after the first full moon after vernal equinox. So every year Easter is on different dates 22 march - 25 April.
Why we in Sweden celebrate Easter is that we symbolize that springtime have come.
The eggs have been the Easter special food we eat and so we painting the eggs. And we write Easter cards and the children gets Easter eggs full with
Candy from the Easter bunny.
And the children dress up to Easter witches and go out and asking for candy.
And we also Easter twigs that we hang feathers in different colors.


Midsummer


In Sweden we celebrate midsummer on the eve of the Friday that occurs between June 19 and June 25. It’s our second most important holiday after Christmas. When we celebrate midsummer we raise a pole that we have dressed with greens and flowers, it’s called maypole. When it’s raised we dance around it and sing, one typical dance is the frog dance. At midsummer, people eat traditional food, like pickled herring and sour cream, much alcohol is also consumed.

From the beginning was midsummer a pagan tradition were they celebrated the arrival of the summer. When Sweden became a Christian country the church tried to tie the celebration of midsummer to the Christian celebration of Saint John the Baptist. But the church didn’t have any success and most of the Swedish people continued to celebrate the popular midsummer.



A work from Sofia Edlund, Michaela Fahleson and Frida Johansson Oja