Swedish Name Days and Totally Obscure Holidays

by Lois Carol Wheatley

 

Aside from meatballs, super models and lutefisk, Sweden has one other major export: whimsy.

 

More than a century ago, Parliament in the Land of the Midnight Sun approved an official list of name days, bestowing proper names on each day of the year in about as random fashion as one might name a very large litter of puppies.

 

Well, some of them may have something to do with patron saints and feast days, but most are more along the lines of Hans, Sigvard and Adolf.

 

In an effort to make our own festivities ever so much more festive, the following represents the Swedish names for the major holidays coming our way in 2010.

 

Jan. 18, Martin Luther King Day, is known as Hilda.

 

Feb. 2, Ground Hog Day, is Kyndelsmassodagen. This has to do with the Christ child being taken for the first time to the temple, and in no way has any association whatsoever with our more secular view of large ground rodents.

 

Feb. 16, known to us as Fat Tuesday, will be known to the Swedes as Julia.

 

Mar. 17, St. Patrick’s Day, is Gertrud.

 

Mar. 28, Palm Sunday, will be Malkolm, Good Friday (Apr. 2) will be Gudmund and Easter (Apr. 4) will be Ambrosius.

 

Mother’s Day (May 9) will be Jonatan and Father’s Day (June 20) will be Flora.

 

Memorial Day (May 31) will be Isabella and Labor Day (Sept. 6) will be Adela.

 

Halloween (Oct. 31) is always Edit, Thanksgiving (Nov. 25) this year will be Katarina and Christmas (Dec. 25) is always Juldagen (Christmas).

 

New Year’s Eve is Sylvester. New Year’s Day is Nyarsdagen (New Year’s).

 

My own birthday is Alf. I couldn’t have named it better. It just looks like an Alf. This year I think I’ll celebrate Alf with a big old plate of potato pancakes and lingonberry jam, maybe throw in some pickled herring and vodka shots—but by all means resisting the urging of many of my friends to try the reindeer.

 

For the complete list of Swedish Name Days, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_name_days.

 

Even more exciting are the many holidays the Swedish celebrate that we Americans neglect entirely. Let us no longer disregard the infinite possibilities of the following auspicious occasions:

 

Waffle Day is March 25. This was supposed to be Mariebedadelsedag, the one day the Lutherans agreed to honor the Catholic custom celebrating the Virgin Mary, but then things got out of hand. “Our Lady’s Day” in Swedish is Varfrudagen, and if you say that after a couple of vodka shots it supposedly sounds like Waffle Day, which is as good an excuse as any.

 

To honor Mary, serve waffles on this day at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Don’t forget the lingonberry jam.

 

Make it a New Year’s Resolution this year to pull out all the stops for Johannes Doparensdag on June 24. It is inconceivable, downright irreverent, that we have no holiday for John the Baptist. While the Swedes were known in the old days to lash one another with birch sticks on Good Friday (known as a “birching”) to commemorate the lashings given to Jesus Christ, it is good to know that beheadings for this occasion never quite caught on—or, for that matter, the head on a platter, which at least has found its way into our standard litany of dire threats.

 

Let me suggest, instead, a good dunking in the Klardlven.

 

The wholesale slaughter of the Holy Innocents is merrily celebrated on Dec. 28, with Menlosabarnsdag. This is when King Herrod, learning from the Magi that a new king was born, killed all the infant males in the geographic vicinity, a number estimated anywhere from a couple dozen to ten thousand.

 

I know what you’re thinking and no civilized culture does that.

 

Somehow this event has translated into the Swedish equivalent of our April Fools Day, pranks and practical jokes, in this case stemming from a tradition of adults and children changing places for one day. And in the folklore this has somehow become associated with bad luck.

 

The aspect of this occasion that is rife for widespread adoption is the ancient custom of the aristocracy to note whatever day Dec. 28 falls on—which, in 2009, is a Monday—and do no work on that day for the entire following year.

 

This one might involve a little bit of explaining to the boss, but it is the holiday gift that keeps on giving. Happy 2010.