Halloween in Stockholm blows away Halloween in Boston.
OK, before anyone gets too worked up with indignation, rolls up sleeves and lashes back, let me make that more precise. Trick-or-treating for kids on Halloween (well, we did it last night on the eve) on my street in northern Stockholm was better than what I could have imagined my kids could experience in Watertown had I brought them there to try it out.
My childhood memory of dressing up and going around the neighborhood conjures powerful emotional ties. If I reflect on days gone by growing up outside of Boston, there is no better memory than getting dressed up in costume and coming home with a pillowcase full of candy (well, snow days and late night sledding before the snowplows came compete for top billing.)
That fuzzy warm nostalgia had made me seriously consider crossing the pond purely to expose the kids to a Halloween night of trick-or-treating, American style. But for cost, time and pragmatic reasons I tried to give it a go with my street’s neighbors.
I put in the legwork (which included knocking on every door to ask if people would want to join in) got every kid on the street to sign up and even imported some friends’ kids to fill up the street.
It was truly magical. Nearly every neighbor was eager to be a part of it. More than half of them carved a pumpkin or lit candles to signal the festivity. Some of them were to so generous that they gave out small bags of candy to each child. It warmed my heart to witness the enthusiasm, hospitality and kindness of my Swedish neighbors.
And so many English-speaking non-Swedes out there think Swedes are so cold, unapproachable and boring. Ha. You haven’t been to my hood. We ROCK!
Happy Halloween to all out there, wherever you may be. And I hope you have as good a Halloween as we’ve had.
The neighbor's efforts to greet us
Tags: boston, Halloween, stockholm, sweden, trick-or-treating
From a Boston Swede –
It’s nice to here about the goings-on back in the Motherland, but I’m American, and just cannot trade my stars and stripes for some fish n’ haddy.
Good luck to you there with the beautiful people and Happy Halloween!
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I am glad your neighborhood was into to celebrating Halloween. Have a safe and Happy Halloween.
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Halloween is un-Swedish. The historical basis for Halloween in northern Europe is burning people as a tribute to Taranis at the time between the end of the year/harvest, and the beginning of the next year, which was at least a month later.
We were never all that big into burning people in Sweden. We tended to drown people or hang them, depending on if we needed help from our sea god or sky/death god.
I think that it is high time we stopped messing around with Halloween, and got back to the basics.
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@ Melanie and Monica. Thanks.
@ Gustav. I’ve been burned by my fair share of Swedes.
BB
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We Swedes can dig the funk though.
Have a Safe and Happy Halloween!
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I am glad you organized your childhood Halloween for the children on your street to experience. I don’t know how long you have been in Sweden, but Halloween isn’t the same as it was when I was a kid. I live in the Midwest and there are fewer and fewer children going door-to-door to trick-or-treat. Most go to schools, hospitals, or the audiorium puts on a “safe” trick-or-treat night. Sad. The days of my childhood are long gone. I read that Sweden does a neat thing on All Saints Day with honoring their dead. I wish you would write about that, or if someone would explain that to me. Have a good night.
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@believe The Local has a piece that could address some of your questions. http://www.thelocal.se/2427/20091029/ Feel free to field anything you want to follow up this way.
BB
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Halloween is not American.
Halloween is primarily a Celtic festival.
Gustav, if you check you will see that there is similarities wiht Viking and Slavic festivals of the same time of year, ie end of harvest. It is the end of harvest, combined with the living meeting there dead relatives. Christians have tried to take it over with all saints day.
It is a a common European event, but unfortuantely is not yet recognised as so.
Trick or treating, knocking on doors and all other aspects of Halloween have been around in Europe, since before Columbas followed the vikings to America.
Hopefully it will come back to more European roots away from American cultural destruction of European culture. Then maybe we can have proper large bonfires and a really good time.
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@BB Thanks for giving me a link to that story. I think it is a beautiful how they celebrate Saint’s Day.
@Andrea. I don’t know if American’s do “cultural destruction” to holiday’s. Well…probably. Of course Halloween is not American. We can only claim 4th of July and Thanksgiving for sure. Maybe Memorial Day and Labor Day. Anything to get a day off. You are right we have obscured every holiday I can think of. But…how about you? Do you really celebrate all holiday’s with European roots, or have you manifested the holday’s the way you want them to be? Do you really celebrate Christmas for what it really is, the birth of Christ, or have you made it more of a family/friend celebration? I’m just curious. It’s all about family and friends for me. I hope I haven’t offended you by asking. One other thought. Why don’t you do what BB did. Next Halloween have a large bonfire and celebrate it the way you want. Sounds like a good time to me.
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@ Andrea. So many holidays evolve and get hijacked along the way. The current usage of Halloween would be interpreted to be the contemporary application as an American theme holiday. In that sense, the Halloween I celebrated was about as American as you could get. But there was also a Swedish flair. Also, the fear factor that Believe brought up is refreshingly absent.
@Believe. Oooh bonfires. Swedes do bonfires right. They have the tradition at least once year (some variations depending on where in Sweden you are.) The “big” celebration is Walpurgus Night (April 30th). That also has pagan origins.
BB
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Halloween is a corruption of “All Hallow’s Eve” – meaning the day before All Saint’s Day. While Andrea is correct that it is an end of harvest festival, she is incorrect in saying that it IS a Celtic festival. It WAS a Celtic festival until the Romans conquered Great Britain (which effectively ended the Celtic culture). We Americans adopted some of the traditional Halloween trick or treating activities from immigrants and made it into a multi-billion dollar industry. However, as believe says, it is not as celebrated as much when I was a child. Too many crazy people in the world.
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@Dee Jay. I don’t want to be around when the Irish hear that the Celtic culture has ended. Anyhow, there aren’t all that many crazy people out there as popular culture will have you believe. I just “Snoped” the legends of poisons and razors in Halloween candy and wouldn’t you know…About as dressed up as a trick-or-treater.
Like I said. I am so relieved to not have the fear-factor in place for our Halloween trick-or-treat.
BB
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Hi Andrea:
We celebrate two harvest festivals. One, traditionally celebrating Freyr, is celebrated when the first harvest starts coming in. The second we celebrate in the middle of October, when our crops are in. The second festival traditionally celebrates Freya.
We light a big fire at both, and pour beer into the fields and garden. Burning the old cane and vines helps keep the garden healthy, and the beer stimulates micro-organisms in the soil.
I am not sure that I would equate any of this with what the Celts did to mark the end of their year at Samhain. They thought that the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead was particularly thin at that time of the year. If we have a time like that in our tradition, it is probably around Mother’s night, the Winter Solstice, when the Wild Hunt is in full swing. Clearly there is the end of the harvest piece, but we are focussed on finding Winter at this point, rather than clearing the slate so that the new year can start.
And I would disagree with Dee Jay’s history. Great Britain did not come into existence until about the time of the Jacobite Rebellions. The Romans conquered the Britons, and held the Scots and Irish at bay for a few hundred years. The Romans never managed to conquer the Germanic Tribes that created England. The Celtic Scots and the Irish maintained elements of their indigenous culture in rural areas despite the imposition of Christianity, and are still influenced by these folk traditions even to this day.
As a footnote, we refer to these Gaelic folk as Celts, but the connection between the Gaels and the Celts is a little problematic. Many scholars would dispute that the Gaels are the same ethnic group as the Celts who built a settlement in what is now Budapest, for example.
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@ Believe
I do not celebrate xmas. I am not of the judeo-christian-islamic-satanist faiths.
My heritage is from the European Western Atlantic seaboard, covering Ireland, Scotland, France, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. I have a rough idea about European heritage.
Next Halloween I am planning on having appropiate bonfire. I am having real fun with a kommune about that one. I showed them a video of a standard bonfire in Northern Ireland and they seemed to be freaked out by that. I seriously wonder have they actually seen a bonfire or cultural event in that kommune.
I grew up in Northern Ireland. I know about Bonfires. In integration terms, it should be a cultural exchange:)
@ Boston Blatte,
Halloween is not American. Accept that. It is a fact. It is at least 2500 years old in Europe and possibly older. The people who wiped out the Americans and are living there now, did not invent Halloween.
@ Dee Jay,
The Romans did not completely wipe out Celtic culture, although they did try as hard as they could. The Romans did however exterminate Dacian culture and its people. They also exterminated the local languages and cultures in Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, Southern Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Bulgaria.
Various aspects of Celtic culture lasted for along time to the point that the pope in the 9th century tried to smother Halloween in a christian event so as to destroy it, but eventually failing. The Catholic Church using inquisition, buildings churches on sacred sites and placing christian holidays on old European festivals almost suceeded in wiping out the majority of European culture. What little remains should be preserved.
The Romans did not, couldn’t and even there sucessors can’t destroy Celtic culture. I would suggest you never visit Ireland, Scotland, Isle of Man, Northern England, Wales or worse Northern Ireland. In Belfast if you spoke to the wrong person your statements would not be taken as a joke, they would be taken for what they are, an insult and provocation.
Also I think you need to read about the Battle of TeutoBurg in Germany in 9AD and what happened to the Roman legions in Scotland when they tried to go across the wall, they did not come back.
Both the Germanics and the Celts in Scotland stood up to the Romans with there woman hating, lack of humanity, bigotry, lawlessness and hatred of the weak. The Cherusci and Picts kicked the crap out of the Romans. Teutoburg really stands out though, due to its sheer unmatched decisiveness.
Even better, educate yourself and introduce yoruself to good law. Read the Celtic Brehon laws, which were part of the laws that coveed all Celtic life, before they were killed, enslaved or put into colluseum type amusements parks for roman cultural expression.
Since you love the romans so much, read about the technology level the Romans destroyed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coligny_calendar
and
http://www.antikythera-mechanism.gr/
http://www.antikythera-mechanism.gr/system/files/0608_Nature.pdf
http://www.antikythera-mechanism.gr/system/files/0608_Nature-Supplementary.pdf
@ Gustav,
I have wondered for a while now about the Freyr festival. There is some similarities. I peronally have a suspicion that it is the same event, just a different language and culture, drifting apart over time.
The Celts, Slavs and Germanics all have a thunder and lightning God as well.
Winter solstice and midsommar are definately common across all 3 cultures.
I only started to notice the similarities last year when I sat down to read some mythology for a cartoon project I am working on. I have started to discuss this with an archeologist.
Across the Celtic, Slavic and Germanic world, I think there is more in common than different.
I have only started to read about Slavic culture. Iam beginning to wonder if it is Celtic with another name and language.
The culture that I noticed is different from all others in Europe, is Roman. They are completely different to Germanic, Slavic and Celtic. There is practically no similarities. They are parasites, with a hatred of women.
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When I was a kid back in the 1950s Halloween was a big neighborhood celebration in Lafayette, CA. The neighbors would invite you in, take pictures, provide you with apple cider and donuts or other goodies and fill your bag. Costumes were made at home and there was always a big party at the local high school with a costume parade and prizes for the best. Moms really got competitive in this one.
You might be interested in a special that was on History Channel.
http://www.history.com/content/halloween/real-story-of-halloween/halloween-comes-to-america
It does seem improbably that the Celts celebrated Samhain on October 31.
The date is from Roman calendars, in the early republic had only ten months and a four year cycle. It had to be reformed to keep it in line with the seasons. The Julian calendar was followed by the Gregorian calendar which only slowly was accepted because it was Roman Catholic in origin. The adaption over the centuries ended up with close to a two week spread of when similar date linked celebrations were held. Historically, some celebrations were held according to when certain plants appeared or were ready to harvest.
It seems far more likely that the Celts celebrated Samhain (Summer’s end) at about the same time, and for the same reasons, that the Norse observed the First Day of Winter in what we know as mid-October. For the Norse that was the beginning of the new year. That celebration could have been grafted onto the newer celebration in somewhat the same manner as Guy Fawkes Day did in England. (See Halloween Around the World in the above link).
Halloween is, by definition, a Christian (Roman Catholic) observance. It would therefore be far more accurate to say that it’s a Roman holiday since it was established by the state church and emperor. For a lot of people, including myself, it’s part of the fun of harvest festivals which also had included many of the traditions that are attributed to Halloween.
I am surprised that no one mentioned the “trick or treating” observance of Easter Witches in Sweden. http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=3525&date=20060411
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@ Susan Granquist
The Celts had more accurate calenders than the Romans.
See,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coligny_calendar
Also Samhain was around for over a thousand years before the pope imposed a religeous day on it in the 9th century to try to wipe out the original meaning.
Just because the Romans and catholic church could not work out accurate dates, does not mean that everyone else could not do so.
Halloween is not a roman catholic day. It is a day the catholic church tried to wipe out and failed, fortuantely for Europeans.
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@Andrea. I think I’ve expressed rather plainly that I don’t argue that the origins of the current, popular practice of Halloween are American. I do maintain that the current, popular practice of children dressing in Star Trek or pumpkin costumes collecting wrapped candy bars from neighbors who open the door to jubilant trick-or-treaters is…100% American.
It’s American as chicken fingers even though both chickens and fingers predate the food.
I also agree that the Catholic Church has done its best to absorb all local practices/celebrations and Christianize them to aid in the conversion of people. It’s not a phenomenon reserved to Europe, but widespread throughout the globe where Catholicism got a dominant grip.
I can’t imagine why any municipality would be in shock over footage of a bonfire. Valborg is annually celebrated throughout Sweden and the bonfires can be enormous. I can only imagine they’d be shocked if what you showed them included humans who tried to celebrate an American variation of Halloween tied to a stake among the flames.
@ Susan. Your experience from the 50s sounds divine. The nicest element of our Halloween celebration was getting to know some of our neighbors just a little bit better (or at least to have been introduced to one another).
There is now talk of a glögg (mulled wine event at xmas) or a crayfish party for the block. I got me some great neighbors.
BB
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I’m a life-long Boston-area resident, so I think I can comment on this article.
I’m not clear exactly what you got from your Swedish Halloween that you wouldnt get in any Boston suburb. Here in Dedham – bordering Boston’s southern edge – I had a pumpkin. and kept “spooky” music playing for the children when they came. Many nearby houses were decorated for the holiday in a much grander way than when I was a child in the 1960s. And there was no need to go door to door to ask people to join in. It’s good that your children enjoyed themselves, but that’s hardly a comment on American celebrations – they would have had a good time here, too.
And regarding your comment on perceptions of Swedes by outsiders: apparently you don’t read The Local very often. There is a regular series of articles on how Swedes see themselves, and cold, unapproachable and boring seems to be the common judgment. Personally, I’ve never seen it in my Swedish relatives, who are warm and fun-loving.
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I miss human sacrifice.
What a wonderful way to start the new year; knowing that all the malcontents, pervs, and troublemakers had been sent to the hereafter.
Of course, in a modern context, who would be left to post at the Local, if we really cleaned house?
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@ Gustav,
Good idea:)
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