cascadiabound
MrTs barmaid
- Joined
- Aug 11, 2015
- Posts
- 29,557
Love it, Strix. Thanks so much for telling us about your traditions. I love how different it is in different places, while also having layers of similarities.Finnish traditions are not exactly German of course, but our word 'joulu' , and the Swedish 'jul' are definitely related to Yule, and our relations used to be better with German countries, we're around the same sea after all (German traders were abundant here already in Middle Ages). And most of our traditions are not exactly Christian. If you take of going to church on Christmas (eve or day), some songs, and advent calendars... The rest is pretty much of pagan origin. So as an atheist I rather call by a non-Christian name.
Though here most of it is actually originally from 'kekri', the old harvest feast that was celebrated in the autumn, a bit like our Halloween. Originally each house celebrated when they had their harvest jobs ready, then in was settled around All Saints' Day. Still in 19th century peasants had kekri, and church and "better people" had Christmas. Some celebrated kekri as late as early 20th century.
"Kekripukki", kekri buck, is something rather similar to Krampus. In Finnish Santa Claus is still called "Yule bock", though these days the looks and behaviour are totally like Santa Claus.
Edit. Sorry about the wall of text, but you asked![]()