In Sweden we celebrate Christmas on the 24th, on Christmas eve instead of Christmas day. Don’t ask me why. I’m not actually christian. No one else in Sweden for that matter. So our customs are pretty weird. We celebrate nothing but buy a lot of crap. I guess we celebrate commercialism and capitalism but we think we celebrate some guy being born more than 2000 years ago. I don’t know. But hey, whatever the reason, we actually celebrate in a cozy way. Just remove all the unessesary presents and I’m fully on board!

It is very common to have a special christmas breakfast with your extended family in Sweden. I like that very much. Especially if it is with very nice and intelligent people with whom you can talk to about a lot of different things. Just like it was for me this time.

Geography, politics, traveling, racing and swedish culture from 50 years ago were some of the subjects we touched on together with mulled (pirate) wine. “Pirate” because rum was the main ingredient in one of the varieties.

Ham is the swedish staple during christmas times. Together with porridge, pickled pieces of herring called “sill”, bread, meat balls, potatoes, beet root sallad, red cabbage and for our family, ribs. For the breakfast today we had most of that but not meat balls and ribs, would have been to heavy for breakfast.

Our breakfast took place in Kristinehamn. A lovely little town. My mother wasn’t with us because she is working all of the Christmas holliday. So it was only me and my nice step father with his family. And this was actually my main official celebration of Christmas. Because my mom is working we had no big dinner or anything. But this was just perfect and enough for me. The hollidays are for relaxing. I can do that here. I celebrate by relaxing with my family.

Later in the evening I took a bath in the jacuzzi and sat in the sauna for a while.
Man do I love bathing in bath tubs and saunas!!

I said cozy. And it is mostly cozy. Relaxing, drinking mulled wine, spending time with your family and eating god food. But many people for some reason celebrate in front of the tv. Swedish people swear by the tradition of watching DONALD DUCK at three o’ clock (the picture is not from that, because I didn’t watch it, it is from when I watched Beverly Hills Cop in the evening). Yes it’s crazy. And then we continue with seeing commercials for new disney movies. It is so stupid. I mean, we are supposed to celebrate christian values or something, but instead we enforce our commercialist values.

It is tireing. And then people complain about not getting enough money for Christmas. Well just stop with the madness? “Oh but we have to for the kids. They will be so sad if they don’t get anything.” Will they really? And who taught them that? Yep you and the society. So just stop. That is my only wish for Christmas. How do you think people in other cultures get by with not celebrating Christmas or even birthdays? They are pretty happy I bet.

And what do we do when Christmas eve and Christmas day is over? Everyone goes out to buy new electronics in the “in between days” as we call it. Everything is cheaper because the stores are selling out the crap that couldn’t sell before Christmas. Yep, in honor of… Jesus.

A small little rant from me :). I really felt that I wanted to express my feelings towards the weird things about swedish Christmas. But I had a great Christmas eve. I usually do have a great one, I love celebrating with my family in our own way. And most people do, they celebrate in their own way and they enjoy it. Most people are very happy with how they celebrate, although many complain about the stress of arranging dinner for their family or about getting presents. And as I said, I wish that could change a bit. But it is how it is.

I’m very happy and I hope you are as well! Happy holidays!!