Finally its here! The long awaited Easter weekend!
I have been looking forward to this for a while! I love this time as Spring has started to give colour to plants, the sun is out more often and the days become longer. Time to celebrate!
As I am Swedish I thought I tell you (all non swedes that is) how we celebrate Easter in Sweden.
Easter is the first extended
weekend of the spring, and for many this means the first trip out to their
holiday cottage, which has been locked and deserted all winter.
Snowdrifts are
melting in the pale spring sunshine. In the north, Easter is more of a skiing
holiday.
Once the cottage has been cleaned,
swept and warmed up, Easter can begin. The members of the family arrive from
near and far. At Easter, the aim is to gather as many relatives as possible.
While in other countries Easter
is specifically a religious holiday, it has become a secular one in Sweden. The
Swedes are well down in the statistics when it comes to church visits per year,
and even if Easter swells the numbers slightly, most people celebrate it at
home with their families and relatives.
Many of the practices
associated with Easter have religious origins, but this is not something that
bothers Swedes much. They eat eggs because they have always done so − not
because they have just completed a fast.
Nowadays, eggs are a favourite
accompaniment to the dish of pickled herring that is the centrepiece of most
Swedes’ Easter meals. And few associate the omnipresent birch twigs − nowadays
decorated with brightly coloured feathers − with the suffering of Christ.
Eggs are painted and hung up or put up in the house as decoration. Easter has its own rituals.
Children dress up as Easter
witches; clad in discarded clothes, gaily coloured headscarves and red-painted
cheeks, they go from house to house in the neighbourhood and present the
occupants with paintings and drawings in the hope of getting sweets in return.
Having consumed all these
sweets, they are then given Easter eggs filled with yet more. Parents who are
more ambitious let the children search for the eggs themselves in a treasure
hunt − following clues and solving riddles until they find their prizes.
A traditional Easter lunch is likely
to consist of different varieties of pickled herring, cured salmon and Jansson’s Temptation
(potato, onion and pickled anchovies baked in cream). The table is often laid
like a traditional smorgasbord (or smörgåsbord as it’s written in Swedish).
Spiced schnapps is also a feature of the Easter table. At dinner, people eat
roast lamb with potato gratin and asparagus, or some other suitable side dish.
Let the weekend begin!
Glad Påsk !
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