I Am Your Finnish Girlfriend

It’s Christmas Eve. And I’m in Finland. For those of you who don’t know, Christmas Eve is the big day around here, today is when we open the presents and attack the food.

Today we also watch the animated short Snowman on TV and go light candles on the graves of the loved ones who are not celebrating Christmas with us.

Traditional Finnish Christmas foods include a big-ass ham (although some people favour the American-style turkey), casseroles made of carrot, potato and such, beet root salad, all kinds of fish (I’m so happy my family doesn’t do the classic lutefisk, some do) and for dessert spice cakes, mince pies and gingerbread men. Finnish Christmas delicacies may sound a bit exotic to foreigners (and they are a bit unusual for Finns as well) but we are a nation that likes traditions. The rest of the year we may chow down pizza and burgers just like the rest of you, but holidays are the time to take a trip to yesteryear. After a few years without a tree, my mom had her way and we again have a fir in the living room (Finns generally prefer a real tree to a plastic one). For some reason decorating it was my duty again, even though I didn’t even want the damn thing. We may even have Santa drop by, as a friend of my parents’ spends the day dressed as one, visiting houses, handing out gifts and scaring the children. Our Santa doesn’t come through the chimney at night, you see, he visits during Christmas eve with a sack of presents (usually an uncle, a grandpa or a neighbour in costume, sometimes a paid Santa) or then just leaves the sack somewhere where it can be conveniently “found” by the children.

The above picture is from where I spend most of my year in, Turku, where it is an annual tradition to bring the biggest motherfucking Christmas tree of the country in front of a medieval church and decorate it with hundreds of lights to bring us some serious holiday spirit.

So Merry Fucking Christmas, to those who celebrate, and to those who don’t… man, sometimes I wish I was one of you.