Christmas In Stockholm:

We’ve been in Stockholm for only a couple of days but we’ve covered a lot of ground with sightseeing. The biggest excitement is of course that it’s nearly Christmas and there have been a few little differences with how Christmas is celebrated in Sweden compared with at home.

For a start there’s not much daylight around at this time of year. In fact the sunrise isn’t until nearly 9am and it’s dark by three. While we’ve been here though, those hours have been covered by grey cloud heavy with snow so it’s hardly “sunny”.

Originally, the December celebration was a mid-winter festival to mark the beginning of the new year but other festivals and events have combined to form the modern day Christmas. That means there a few unique traditions here.

• Christmas markets. The oldest Christmas market is in Gamla Stan and we visited yesterday with our lovely friends Moa and Sofie. We tried Glögg – the traditional Christmas drink of warm spiced wine with fruit and almonds – and warmed almonds and admired the yummy food and handmade crafts.
• Skeppsbron Tree – the largest real Christmas tree in the world. Mum saw this from the other side of the city and it was enormous even from afar
• Lights – as it’s so dark for so long the city of Stockholm looks stunning with lights everywhere. The best ones are the the huge reindeer and moose!
• Tomten – These are best described as little trolls that are Sweden’s Santa Claus and are sometimes called Jultomten. We had a bit of trouble working out what the deal is here but it sounds like the tomten are more like Santa’s helpers, though they are always red with a long white beard. Sometime after 3pm on December 24, the tomten deliver gifts to the families. The legend of the tomte are folklore creatures responsible for looking after the welfare of farms and the farmers families.
• Christmas goat – this is where it becomes even more interesting as seems before Santa or the tomte delivered gifts, families were visited by a Christmas goat! We’ll have to do a little more research into Norse mythology to work out that one!
• Julmust – looking through the supermarkets at the moment this drink is everywhere so we had to try some. It’s a soft drink which looks like cola and the ingredients make it sounds like a caramel vegemite. Tasted great to 2 out of 3 Sobotta Sisters! Sales of all other soft drinks drop dramatically over December and there’s only one company which makes the “must” syrup for distribution. This is very definitely a uniquely Swedish drink.