Last year I experienced my first full blown Swedish Christmas.
This year we decided to take a trip across the pond to visit my family in Montana. I didn’t want my Swede to feel homesick, so we brought some things to make it a Swedish Christmas as well.
First off, I wanted to bring something special to my mom that was very Swedish, for Christmas, not too expensive, and light weight.
The “halmbock”, which translates to weird straw goat, which everyone seems to have as a Christmas ornament seemed like a perfect option.
Luckily it didn’t get too smashed in the luggage!
Another thing that everybody loves at Christmas time is candy. So I decided to bring some Swedish candy.
While “Bilar” or “cars”, aren’t only at Christmas time, they are still pretty good and got eaten up quickly.
The Christmas “SkumTomtar”, or “foam Santas” are a perfect Christmas only time treat. My brother described them as “If clouds had a taste, they would taste like this”.
While both of these things do bring a little Swedish to Christmas time, it wasn’t complete. There was something missing.
What could it be? Easy! Kalle Anke at 3pm!
We couldn’t do it exactly at 3pm as my brothers wanted to watch football. But we did have time for “Kalle Anke” (Donald Duck) in Swedish, and the whole family enjoyed it!
In case some of you are new to Sweden and Swedish freak, it is a tradition in Sweden that at 3pm on Christmas eve the whole country turns on the TV and watches an old Disney cartoon. This cartoon has classic Disney cartoons that I have seen before, as well as newer ones from newer films.
This definitely makes for a Swedish Christmas. So we didn’t have all the Swedish food like meatballs and sausages, meat cuts, etc. But we did manage a little Swedish in our Christmas this year.
