40 Fun Facts About Christmas in Sweden

Julmust, Sweden's dark spiced Christmas soda, is famous for outselling which global rival every December?

Coca-Cola sales in Sweden reportedly fall by as much as half over the holiday, when julmust accounts for around half of all the soft drink the country gets through.

Swedes celebrate Christmas on 24 December because medieval Sweden began each new day at what moment?

Sunset on 24 December once marked the start of Christmas Day, and the evening celebration stayed put even after Sweden switched to counting days from midnight.

What does the girl chosen as Lucia wear in a crown on her head in Sweden's 13 December processions?

Candles in the crown stand for the light Lucia carries into the dark Swedish winter, although these days the flames are usually electric.

What is hidden in the Christmas rice porridge in Sweden, said to bring luck to whoever finds it?

An almond in the bowl means a lucky year ahead for its finder in Sweden and Finland, while in Norway and Denmark whoever gets it wins a small present instead.

Which animal, now a straw ornament, brought Swedish Christmas presents before Santa Claus took over?

Goat costumes were worn by a man of the family to hand out the gifts in the 1800s, and Finland's Santa still carries the old name, Joulupukki.

How does Jultomten, the Swedish Santa, traditionally deliver the presents on Christmas Eve?

Knocking at the door with a sack of gifts is the Swedish way, so someone slips out of the party, dresses up and comes back to hand the presents over in person.

Which Swedish city's giant straw Christmas figure has been burned or wrecked in most years since 1966?

Gävle raises the 13-metre figure in its Castle Square each winter, and an American tourist who set it alight in 2001 told the court he thought burning it was a legal tradition.

Lutfisk, the dried fish of the Swedish Christmas table, is soaked in water and what else before cooking?

Lye makes the dried fish swell into a jelly-like texture, and it then needs days more soaking in fresh water before it is fit to eat.

Which spice gives Sweden's S-shaped Saint Lucy's Day buns their golden-yellow colour?

Saffron colours the raisin-studded dough, and Lucia herself traditionally serves the buns with coffee, a custom that dates back to the 1880s.

Sweden's golden Lucia buns are shaped to look like which curled-up animals, with raisins for eyes?

Cats give the buns their Swedish name, lussekatter, and the simplest version is a curled S with a raisin tucked into each end.

The tune Swedes sing in Saint Lucy's Day processions began as a boatman's song from which Italian city?

Naples has a waterfront district called Borgo Santa Lucia, and the original words are a boatman's invitation to an evening ride, with no saint or winter in them at all.

Saint Lucy, honoured across Sweden every 13 December, was a martyr from Syracuse on which Mediterranean island?

Sicily keeps its own legend of her feast day: a famine is said to have ended when ships loaded with grain sailed into the harbour.

In Swedish folklore, what could all animals do on Lucia Night, once reckoned the longest night of the year?

Speak they could, on a night when supernatural beings were abroad, and people were urged to eat seven or nine hearty breakfasts to recover.

What kind of business revived Sweden's Lucia custom in 1927 with a contest to pick Stockholm's official Lucia?

A newspaper, Stockholms Dagblad, sponsored the competition, which grew into a grand parade through the streets and a crowning at the city hall.

In a Swedish Lucia procession, what name is given to the male attendants in white gowns and tall paper cone hats?

Star boys carry a star on a stick because the role began as a Twelfth Night custom about the Three Wise Men, when boys went singing from farm to farm.

Which Stockholm open-air museum, the oldest in Sweden, has held a popular Christmas market since 1903?

Skansen was opened in 1891 to show how Swedes lived before the industrial era, and it became the model for open-air museums across Scandinavia.

Sweden's Christmas soft drink julmust was invented in 1910 as an alcohol-free alternative to which drink?

Beer drinkers were the target for Harry Roberts and his father, who flavoured it with hops and malt, and the syrup is still made only by the Roberts company in Örebro.

Which hot spiced wine do Swedes serve with blanched almonds and raisins in the weeks before Christmas?

Glögg takes its name from the Swedish verb glödga, to heat up, and many Swedes pour a cup on each of the four Sundays that lead up to Christmas.

Sweden's Christmas ham is painted with egg, breadcrumbs and which condiment before it is browned in the oven?

Mustard goes into the glaze and onto the plate too, while the stock left from boiling the ham is kept for dipping bread, a ritual called dopp i grytan.

Which creamy potato and sprat casserole on Sweden's Christmas table may have been named after a 1928 film?

Jansson's Temptation layers potato strips with onion, cream and pickled sprats, which English recipes often mistranslate as anchovies because Swedes call them ansjovis.

A Swedish julbord traditionally opens with which pickled fish, served with sour cream and chives?

Herring opens a buffet that can run to seven courses, moving on through cold fish, sliced meats and warm dishes before the cheese and the sweets.

Pepparkakor, the thin crisp biscuits baked across Sweden each December, are a version of which bake?

Gingerbread in Sweden is rolled wafer-thin and cut into shapes, and although the name means pepper cakes, the main spices are ginger, cinnamon and cloves.

Which flower traditionally fills Swedish homes with its powerful scent in the days around Christmas?

Hyacinths share the room with wall hangings, patterned tablecloths, angels and little Santa figures once Swedes start decorating in December.

In Nordic folklore, the farm tomte flies into a rage if his Christmas Eve porridge comes without what on top?

Butter mattered so much that in one much-told tale the spirit killed the farm's cow over a bare bowl, then found the pat had been hidden underneath all along.

For which creatures did Swedish farms traditionally put out a sheaf of oats at Christmas?

Birds got their oat sheaf while the farm's guardian spirit got a plate of porridge, and fresh straw was laid over the cottage floor.

In old Swedish belief, the Christmas food was left on the table overnight so that who could come and feast?

The dead were also thought to hold a church service of their own that night, leaving traces of earth in the pews for the living to find on Christmas morning.

On Boxing Day, old Swedish custom had farmers rise early to water which animals in honour of Saint Stephen?

Horses were led to streams that ran north, because Saint Stephen was their patron saint and was said to have watered his own in the same way.

Before real presents caught on, what did Swedes wrap up and toss into someone's home as a Christmas joke?

A log of wood was the usual anonymous joke gift, and Swedes only began handing one another real presents in the 1900s.

Which saint's day on 13 January ends the Swedish Christmas, when children strip the tree of its last sweets?

Saint Knut's Day is the twentieth day of Christmas, and the party at which the tree is stripped and thrown out is called julgransplundring, or Christmas tree plundering.

Julotta, the Swedish Christmas Day service worshippers once raced home from, is held at what time?

Before dawn is the rule, since otta means the hour before daybreak, and whoever raced home first afterwards was said to be favoured at the next harvest.

From which country did Swedes import the custom of bringing a decorated Christmas tree indoors?

Germany also supplied the finest shop-bought decorations sold in Swedish cities from around 1880, while many families made their own from paper and straw.

Alongside tinsel and baubles, which patriotic decoration do many Swedes string across their Christmas trees?

Small flags in the national blue and yellow hang in rows on many Swedish trees, next to straw ornaments, apples and little gnomes.

Which Swedish children's author retold Viktor Rydberg's midwinter poem Tomten as a 1960 picture book?

Astrid Lindgren turned the 1881 poem into a prose story with pictures by Harald Wiberg, and two films have since been made from her Tomten tales.

Which Swedish illustrator's Christmas cards fixed the image of Jultomten as a white-bearded figure in a red cap?

Jenny Nyström is said to have used her own father as a model for the face, and her drawings tied the Swedish Santa to the little farm spirits of Nordic folklore.

Which Ingmar Bergman film, winner of four Academy Awards, opens with a lavish family Christmas in Uppsala?

Fanny and Alexander stages the Ekdahl family's Christmas party in a home that Bergman modelled on his own grandmother's Uppsala residence.

In Sweden's Christmas Eve cartoon, where does Karl-Bertil Jonsson work when he takes rich people's parcels?

A post office job lets the 14-year-old, who idolises Robin Hood, sort the parcels of the rich into a separate bag and deliver them to Stockholm's poor instead.

Sweden's daily children's TV serial, shown every December since 1960, is modelled on which Christmas custom?

Advent calendar rules shape the show: one episode a day from 1 December to Christmas Eve, with a paper version sold so viewers can open a matching window each day.

Jul, the Swedish word for Christmas, comes from the same ancient root as which English word?

Yule is its English cousin, and the same root reached Finnish as juhla, a word that now simply means a celebration of any kind.

Which Norse god, linked to the old Nordic midwinter feast, also went by the name Jólnir?

Odin went by many names, and the old sources describe keeping the midwinter feast simply as drinking jul, with ale and mead at its heart.

Saint Lucy is one of few saints still celebrated in Sweden, whose national church follows which Protestant tradition?

Lutheran reformers rejected praying to saints, which makes Sweden's white-robed 13 December processions a striking survivor.