Midsummer Take 1

I wrote this post months ago and never got it posted. It's a two part post. Here's the first one.

Midsummer is a holiday that all Scandinavians celebrate.  Many other countries do as well, but in Scandinavia it's a bank holiday, meaning no one works!  There is a lot of history in midsummer celebrations that dates back centuries into pagan times.  Originally it was the summer solstice celebration, but like other pagan holidays, the Christians kept the date the same and called it something different.  This made the transition from widespread paganism to Christianity smoother for the public. For that reason sometimes it is referred to as St. John's Eve because the bible refers to John the Baptist as being 6 months older than Jesus.  Nonetheless, it is a really big deal in Sweden.

It is a day that comes with a lot of traditions and can be celebrated anywhere between June 21 and June 25.  In Denmark they have bonfires where they burn a witch.  It is symbolic of scaring the witches back to Bloksbjerg in the Brocken mountain in the Harz region of Germany.  In Finland they also have bonfires, but without the witch, and they put birch trees arounds their doors.  In Sweden everyone looks forward to midsummer.  It is the most anticipated day of the year, right behind Christmas.

Here midsummer is the same as the first day of summer at home, June 21.  I get amusement out of the fact that it's called "mid" as in the middle, when back home you know you are still in for at least two and half more full months of scorching heat. At work we had a celebration on the Tuesday before.  First thing's first, you need a maypole.  This maypole happens to contain trimmings from our yard!

Then you need strawberries.  In our case we had cake!  Most people would tell you they have to be Swedish strawberries.  I can't vouch for the nationality of these, but I do have to say Swedish strawberries are very good!

Next comes socializing and enjoying the fact that you are about to go on a month's vacation, well at least most of these people are.

Here's Chris and Bea.

Here I am sporting a wreath.  Wreath's are an important part of midsummer.  You may notice I'm wearing a tank top.  It's a rare occasion and I will never take it for granted again!!

Even the CEO Jim Yeck, he's American, is embracing the local culture.

After cake, it's time for dancing around the maypole.  There are some traditional songs that go along with it, of course they were sung in Swedish, so we didn't join in.

There was another interesting part to the day, meet Loretta.  She grew up in North Knoxville about a mile from where Chris and I lived on Coker!  She still has her family's house there.  She met a vacuum engineer at SNS (the man in yellow, he's British), they married, retired, and he took a job at ESS.  She and I sounded like two peas in a pod when we started talking.  She's the lady in blue.  The lady in white is from Buffalo, NY.  Her husband is in cryogenics.  The world really is small (I guess especially in such a small community as neutron scattering)!

It was an awesome afternoon that ended with going out for pizza with the American crowd!  Here's some bonus pics of true Swedes.