"Ho ho ho!" may become "fire fire fire!" for Santa Claus impersonators seeking to wing it with fake facial hair, Swedish beard safety experts have warned.
Sweden is suffering from a serious Santa shortage. That's the worrying message from the profession's Swedish trade organisation, which is appealing for more Santas to come forward.
Those dreaming of a white Christmas can stop dreaming – and give up. The Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, SMHI, has forecast temperatures of up to 8 degrees for Stockholm and 10 degrees for far south of the country of Sweden on Christmas Eve.
More Swedes die in the two week period after Christmas than at any other time of the year. New figures from the National Board of Health and Welfare show that Christmas time is the deadliest time.
Skansen at Christmas is so much more than a bustling artisan market with crafts, traditional Christmas foods, spiced, mulled wine and ubiquitous carnival raffle to take home the oversized Marabou chocolate prize.
Christmas decorations have been up and for sale in Sweden's shops since late October. Now it's time for Christmas markets to open their stalls and the smell of glögg and gingerbread biscuits spreading through the cold winter air will quickly get you in the mood.
All Swedes want for Christmas this year is audio books, a new survey claims. The news will come as a relief to the wallets of Christmas shoppers – top Christmas presents in previous years have included flat-screen televisions.
Swedish Christmas shoppers were using their credit and debit cards like never before in 2005. New figures from card handling company Babs show that card purchases were up 21 percent last December compared to December 2004.
'Stockholm Syndrome' - when a hostage sympathises with, or even falls in love with, his or her captor - perfectly sums up our correspondent's attitude towards the Swedish capital.
The traditional Christmas ham, centrepiece of the annual Swedish Yuletide smörgåsbord, is set to eat into the present budget this year, butchers are warning, with prices for the delicacy at record high levels.
This year Swedes are expected to spend some 48 billion kronor on Christmas shopping - and the gift of the moment is a poker set, according to the Swedish Research Institute of Trade (Handelns utredningsinstitut, HUI).
Postal services around the world are gearing up for their most frantic period of the year - ensuring wishful letters from millions of children get through to the jolly fat man running the North Pole toy factory.
Sweden's journalists were in jovial mood as they marked April Fools' Day. Newspapers around the country jostled to catch out their more gullible readers with improbable yarns.
