Ye Good Ol’ Christmas Traditions

Dear Chang,^*


You are probably just dying to learn more about the curious traditions we Finns had back at the turn of the 21^st century. Like virpominen (a bit like trick-or-treating but done near Easter, and only by little girls dressed as witches, tapping people with willow-branch withes and chanting that this will make the target persons “new and healthy”); or the custom that many diners served pea soup and pancakes every Thursday; or that thing we called sauvakävely (Nordic walking) – what the hell was that all about!? Now, it was Christmas just recently, so I thought that this time around I might indulge you with some adept contemporary observations concerning our Christmas traditions.


Traditions, much like times according to Bob Dylan, they are achangin. Consider, for instance, how the Finnish version of Santa Claus, already before it got soaked with American Coca-Cola advertisement in the mid-20^th century, was a curious mixture of the actual fourth century person, bishop Nicholas (a Christian saint) and the pagan medieval character of nuuttipukki – that used to be played by young hooligans wearing a billygoat hide and horns (symbolizing fertility, I am told) and going from house to house to beg for beer and raise hell around the time of the end of Christmas (in January). Drawing from the latter tradition, Santa Claus – joulupukki in Finnish, still literally meaning Christmas-billy – used to be a rather scary character, something to frighten your children with. (By the way, that side of Father Christmas was brilliantly developed by Jalmari Helander in his movie Rare Exports [2010] (which you should definitely see, if you haven’t already).) Only an inkling of that scary side was maintained by the 20^th century Santa, in Finland no more than in other countries; it reduced to little more than parents sort of blackmailing their children to be nice lest Santa might not bring them any gifts. (You hear some of that in the songs telling us that Santa knows whether you have been naughty or nice – the intimidating aspect of which was insightfully and funnily captured by this joke in The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, performed by the great Liam Neeson, by the way.) These days, for the most part, the Finnish joulupukki is much the same as the American Santa Claus. So yes, indeed, traditions keep changing all the time; some old ones disappear, some tangle together with other traditions or novel influences, and new traditions are created too. But let me nevertheless try and offer a snapshot of the Finnish Christmas traditions as I have personally experienced them over these 40+ years of my life.


Christmas caroling, for one, is much less a tradition in Finland than in some other Western countries. You do not see groups of people touring from house to house doing Christmas caroling, you don’t. (Except perhaps some hammered students who might have come up with this idea in the middle of the night, but even that is very rare.) Yet Christmas carols, the songs that you only hear around Christmas time, do play a part in our Finnish lives and minds. This is mostly because, most of us were forced to sing these songs in school when we were small children – both some cheerful ones like “Jingle Bells” in Finnish translation, songs telling us that everything is oh so jolly, Santa packing his sledge with toys, etc., and also quite a few of the not so jolly ones, the pompously solemn, melancholic or even sad, religious hymns. I guess most of the Christmas carols written by Finns are of the latter kind.


Ours is a rather secular society, to be sure, and tends to become more so every year (I should hope), but at least in the 1980s small children were still quite ruthlessly indoctrinated with religious propaganda in countless many elementary school classes across the country, the teachers themselves usually being at least conventional Christians if not members to some revivalist movement. My first six years in school took place at Vanhankylän primary school (still a semi-rural neighborhood with lots of fields and cows and sheet), and as I recall it my first and second grade teacher, this stern elderly lady, had actually been doing some missionary work in Africa. So, yes, it was pretty “Old School” stuff I can assure you: she would play harmonium and make us sing songs like the “Hoosianna” (Hosanna) hymn (“Hosanna / The son of David / Praised be him! / The praised son of David / Who comes in the name of the Lord …”). I kid you not, Chang; I kid you not!



Many of the songs that we hear and sing in childhood, both religious and secular ones, leave deep, emotional memory traces, as well as associations with people and places perhaps. They will forever be attached to our feelings, even if we grow up to loathe their explicit message. One of my favorite philosophers, the famous atheist Daniel Dennett, starts out his book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995) with a personal anecdote about the song “Tell Me Why” that he used to sing as a child, a song where they sing “Tell me why the stars do shine / Tell me why the ivy twines / Tell me why the sky’s so blue / Then I will tell you just why I love you. // Because God made the stars to shine / Because God made the ivy twine / Because God made the sky so blue / Because God made you, that’s why I love you.” That pathetic, childish song “still brings a lump to my throat,” Dennett confesses. (p. 17.) Indeed, I guess most of us who turned atheists at an older age have this sort of experiences with respect to one religious song or another.

One of the better songs, one that I am not too bitter to feel a bit nostalgic about, is “Varpunen jouluaamuna.” I just did a bit of research (googled the song’s Wikipedia page, hah!) and found out that the lyrics were originally a poem by the great pre-independence time national writer and academic, Zacharias Topelius (1818–1898), written in 1859, and that they reflected the fact that Topelius had lost his one-year-old son the Spring before. Topelius wrote the poem in Swedish, but it was translated into Finnish by K. A. Hougberg, and it is in the Finnish form that most Finns know and love it. The most famous composition to music was done by one Otto Kotilainen in 1913 (again: in Wikipedia I trust; I certainly would not know this sort of things by heart). The melody as well as the lyrics are very melancholic. (To hear the melody, you can probably find the song online – just search with the Finnish title “Varpunen jouluaamuna”; and here is a link to one version, performed by Mr. Jarkko Ahola, better known as a heavy metal singer.)

I suppose that, having started about this thing, I should actually try and offer a rough (and probably rather poor, I am afraid) translation, by yours truly, of the (Finnish) lyrics.



A Sparrow at Christmas Morning

The flowers in the vale covered by snow
The wave in the lake frozen in the chilly winter blow.
A tiniest sparrow, having eaten its summer supply
The wave in the lake frozen in the chilly winter blow.

At the steps of a little cabin stood a girl dearest:
– Come now, birdie, rejoice, take these grains I giveth!
It is Christmas, after all, you poor thing, homeless
Come here, rejoice, take these grains I giveth!

To the girl flew the sparrow, tiny darling:
– Greatful, I do take these grains from thee
And God surely will once reward you for this.
Greatful, I do take these grains from thee!

– I am not, my child, a bird from this world.
I am your little brother, I came from Heaven above.
The crumbs that you gave to this poor thing
Fed your little brother from the land of angels. 

Melancholy aplenty, that’s what I am saying. Yet you will need to understand that, for most Finns, Christmas carols, including if not especially the more melancholic carols, are attached to mainly positive feelings. They also help construct the right kind of framework of mind, if only because they are usually never played outside December: they guide us into the proper mood or ambiance. (And, unsurprisingly, people in the marketing business will eagerly exploit this, play these songs at the malls and in the shops that you visit, starting from around late-November already I think. That way, you would really need to be braindead in order not to know it is getting near to Christmas time.)

What else should I tell you about Christmas in Finland these days? Well, traditionally, people buy presents, send Christmas cards, decorate their homes with colorful lights and stuff, turn off the electric lights indoors perhaps and light a few candles instead, and they expect Dad to carry home a Christmas tree. At least, that is how it used to be; it would seem to have changed to an extent. People do still give presents, especially in families with children, but as I understand it the sum the average family spends on gifts is not what it used to be before the recession/stagnation (which has lasted for, what, a decade now?). Christmas cards are being sent less and less each year, too; though that has nothing to do with the recession but is simply due to the fact that younger people, and even my very middle-aged generation, have just opted out from that tradition (I myself have not sent any actual Christmas cards for twenty years, although we do slip one inside the gift package that we mail to my parents and sister). Even the Christmas decorations are pretty bare these days, especially in childless households, and most loners and childless couples find the Christmas tree just way too much trouble; they might settle for a Christmas wreath or a branch or a mere treetop of a spruce. It is different with families with kids – as it should be, I think: even for an old diehard atheist like me, it is somehow a heartwarming notion that children get to experience the joy of Christmas – the smell of a fresh spruce tree carried inside, the decorations, the candles in the otherwise dark rooms; yes, the whole shebang. Traditions, or customs, are among some of the most peculiarly human things: there is a sense in which they make us human; and they certainly creep into our minds when we are children and come to constitute a part of who we are. They change in time, of course – indeed, we change them ourselves, simply by changing our ways, little by little; but we should not try and change everything at once (even if that was possible, which I do not think it is).


Now the day before Christmas, the jouluaatto is very special in Finland; it is a holiday in its own right. (Perhaps I should point out that while joulu is Christmas, aatto is the postfix that can be added to signal that it is the day before – we also have juhannusaatto, for example, the day before juhannus, the midsummer’s day, the latter again being the official holiday (though people actually get hammered in the aatto evening and suffer from hangover the day of juhannus); and Finnish being the most flexible language in the world (thus thinks I), one can conceivably and quite understandably use the term aatto also in just about any creative combinations, like to say that it is syntymäpäiväni aatto – the day before my birthday; or, perhaps, kesälomani aatto – the day before my summer vacation.)


Annyhoow, there are a couple of special traditions that Finns enjoy during the jouluaatto. Most significantly, at noon that day there is an official event known as the Declaration of Christmas Peace. It takes place in Turku (where I live), the old capital city (though when Turku was the capital, Finland was not independent) at the South-West coast of Finland. And this one is a real Tradition with a capital-T, mind you: it goes way, way back to the 14^th century! (There have only been a few short intervening periods, like the years 1712–1721 of a particularly terrible Russian invasion and occupation of Finland; possibly the years 1809–1815; and, in the 20^th century, only in the turmoil of 1917 when Finland had just declared her independence, and in 1939 – which was the Christmas of the Winter War and they feared Soviet air raids.) The declaration is read out loud by a city official, and since 1886 this has been done from the balcony of the Brinkkala building near the Cathedral of Turku. The words of the declaration, read from a parchment, have changed slightly over the centuries, I have been told, though the message has remained essentially the same – it is to declare the Christmas time to have begun and to remind everyone to celebrate it peacefully (threatening offenders with harder-than-usual punishment), and to wish everyone a merry Christmas. The current form of the text dates back over a hundred years. Here is how it goes:


“Tomorrow, God willing, is the graceful celebration of the birth of our Lord and Saviour; and thus is declared a peaceful Christmas time to all, by advising devotion and to behave otherwise quietly and peacefully, because he who breaks this peace and violates the peace of Christmas by any illegal or improper behaviour shall under aggravating circumstances be guilty and punished according to what the law and statutes prescribe for each and every offence separately. Finally, a joyous Christmas feast is wished to all inhabitants of the city!”


The declaration has been broadcast on the radio since 1935, and has been televised since 1982. But there are always thousands of people gathered under the balcony and nearby too. So, yes, it is a mass event (as well as, of course, a rather Christian one), and yet the security measures around the event have been relatively scant; this Christmas, however, there was much more police presence and they had also cut off the motor traffic from all sides of the venue, obviously reacting to the terrorist attacks in France earlier last year and in Germany just a couple days before Christmas (where a terrorist drove a truck to the crowd). These are some of the signs of our times, I am afraid.


There are also some special programs on TV all jouluaatto day, like The Snowman animation with its classic theme song Walking in the Air (sang by a boy soprano, I just recently learned from newspaper). I hear that the movie and the song are something of a Christmas classic in some other countries too.


Then there is the very Finnish tradition of Christmas sauna. We Finns, of course, like our sauna any day of the year and many families traditionally bath in sauna every Friday, say, or every Saturday perhaps; but the Christmas sauna, bathing in sauna the Christmas Eve, is nevertheless a special, traditional, nostalgic occasion for many if not most Finns. It is a moment of calming down, taking time for yourself – indeed, many people, myself included, like to enjoy their Christmas sauna alone – relaxing in that warm, steamy and dimly lit room, far away from everyday troubles.


After the sauna, we eat. The most traditional item in the Finnish Christmas table is the ham – a roasted thigh or butt of a pig, usually crusted with breadcrumbs and served with some mustard on the side. Now, as I say the most traditional item, I am not thinking farther than less than a hundred years back, though: some sort of roasted meat has been traditional much longer, but until the early decades of the 20^th century it usually wasn’t pork that they ate; mutton was much more common back then, I’ve been told. And over the past decade or so, turkey has been making its way to the Finnish Christmas table; in some households it has taken the ham’s place. There are also more and more vegetarian households, and there are some vegetarian alternatives to the ham (some of them made to look much like the ham). Anyways, the ham is still by far the most common centerpiece of a Finnish Christmas table. It is usually baked in relatively low temperatures, for hours and hours (usually for more than one hour per kilogram; and the bigger hams weigh more than 10 kilograms easy). Believe me, that bad boy comes out tender and juicy – sweet Jesus how tender and juicy at its best (insert the drooling sound by Homer Simpson here)! Even if you don’t usually eat pork (as is the case with yours truly), this is the one time of the year that you might consider making an exception!


Other very traditional Christmas foods include a variety of fish dishes like gravlax, or perhaps salmon in some other form, and herring served in various different sauces – garlic, tomato, or mustard sauce, for example. You might also see some roe served in the Christmas table. In addition, there is usually rye-meal bread, perhaps such that is deserving of the particular label joululimppu (a Christmas loaf). Rosolli salad – made of potato, carrot and beetroot – there will usually be also. And at least in my childhood home we always had some dried plums (prunes, right, although my dictionary says the term is obsolete now in this meaning?) in the table. Come to think of it, I do not know whether dried plums are very common a dish in the Christmas table, but they are traditional to me. And they are good for your plumbing (plum -> plumbing?). Otherwise that good kilo block of ham that you ate Christmas eve might take a week (I am only slightly exaggerating) to go through your system; and come the day of reckoning you would be crying to sweet Mary Mother of God to help you deliver the end product. But with some good plum fiber in your gut even the heavy stuff will travel through your intestines as smoothly as a freight train. In many families they also drink kvass at the Christmas dinner. (I personally hate that sewage myself.) And perhaps most essentially, there must always, always be these couple of very particular types of casserole foods served at a Christmas dinner: it will invariably include at least some rutabaga casserole and some carrot casserole. More often than not there will also be some (smashed) potato casserole. Liver casserole might also be served, but that is nowhere nearly as closely associated with Christmas as rutabaga and carrot casseroles in particular, for liver casserole (sold by many big convenience food manufacturers in Finland, most often in 400 g boxes that feed about one person each) is a pretty normal everyday food item in this country (most often eaten with some lingonberry jam), whereas you won’t see any carrot or rutabaga casserole being served outside December. You just won’t – that is something that we simply do not do here, ever. Meanwhile, it is equally unimaginable that there might be a Christmas lunch or dinner without those dishes.


After dinner, and all through the Christmas holidays, we Finns eat loads of chocolate. Several boxes of chocolate; yep, a good couple of kilograms of that stuff might well be consumed by a given person (say, me, for example) over three or four days. And it is not just chocolate that we eat, no. There is this one other traditional delicacy that belongs to Christmas for many of us: these quite specific, pear-tasting, ball-shaped, green marmalade jellies called Vihreät kuulat (Gröna kulor in Swedish); I tried to look for the preferred English translation from the manufacturer’s (Fazer – a company established in the 19^th century by one Mr. Karl Fazer and still owned by the family) web page but couldn’t find the product from their English page. The retailers seem to market the product under various names, as Green Marbles (would be my preference), Green Jellies, or Green Balls. The last one is probably not the most enticing translation, although it could give rise to some pretty legendary – though tragic, absolutely woeful, and my sincerest apologies and condolences to anyone who has actually lost someone like that – events, because the said delicacies are pretty big in size, and it is also imaginable that some poor kid might take a couple of them into one’s mouth at the same time (I remember doing that myself as a child, actually, the idiot that I was; but do not try that at home, you fools!) and accidentally choke to death if they got stuck to his throat, thus becoming known as the fellow who choked on a pair of huge balls that he was sucking at Christmas night.


^*) Chang is my imaginary 25^th century cultural anthropologist, reading my ancient blog texts in order to better understand the turn of the millennium Finnish culture – see the last couple of paragraphs of my second post in November 2016.