Swedish Christmas Extravaganza
Discover the Traditions of Your Ancestors
A three-part video series
The customs, folklore, and food of your ancestors
Your family didn’t just celebrate Christmas — they carried generations of rituals, beliefs, and customs across oceans. In this three-part video series and companion Christmas Calendar — the Swedish Christmas Extravaganza — you’ll explore how Swedish Christmas evolved from pagan rituals to 19th century festivities.
Swedish Christmas Calendar 2026-2027
Swedish Christmas Day by Day
Swedish Christmas Extravaganza Part 1
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Transcript
Hej! Welcome to the Swedish Christmas Extravaganza.
Before we begin, I want you to know that I try to keep information short and relevant. I suspect you have other things in your life that need attention. You can download your Swedish Christmas calendar below. There’s a transcription for those who prefer to read.
With that said, let’s start the Swedish Christmas Extravaganza. We’ll begin by looking at the timeline of the traditional Swedish Christmas celebrations.
Today is the first Sunday of Advent. This is when the decorating begins. Many Swedes keep a candlestick with four candles, lighting one more each Sunday of Advent. So, on this day, the first candle is lit.
In the days of our Swedish ancestors, Advent was a period when the church organ could not be used. It was a practice that continued to the mid-1700s. Until the 16th century, Sweden was a Catholic country, with even more signs of the season. Altars and church images were covered, and no weddings were held.
Halfway through Advent, Swedes celebrate Saint Lucy, Lucia. It’s on the 13th of December. This is a unique Swedish tradition celebrating the return of the longer days. We’ll delve more into this in Part 2.
By the third Sunday of Advent, three out of four candles are lit.
Traditionally, the 23rd of December is when the Christmas tree is decorated. This might seem late, but it will make sense in a minute.
Another area where Sweden and Scandinavia stand out is that the main Christmas celebrations take place on the 24th of December. Christmas is a family holiday in Sweden and this is when people gather and exchange gifts.
Of course, in the church, Christmas Day is the main event. For our ancestors, church attendance was mandatory. Christmas Day started in church. Julotta is a service commemorating the birth of Jesus. It was traditionally held at 4 in the morning. It eventually shifted to 6 in the morning, mandated by a law from 1686.
Christmas Day and Boxing Day are national holidays in Sweden. Before 1772, the next two days were also holidays. Many Swedes take a couple of weeks to wind down during this time. It may sound like a luxury. But remember, the sun is very low this time of the year. Some Swedes even live in complete darkness for a few weeks. Resting is basic self-care.
Then comes New Year’s Day. It’s another public holiday, unrelated to Christmas. The slow period ends on Epiphany, the 6th of January, also a public holiday in Sweden.
But Christmas in Sweden isn’t over yet.
On the 13th of January, after having the Christmas tree up for three weeks, it’s time for its farewell. This is the twentieth day of Christmas, or Tjugondag Knut. On this day, Swedes finish the leftovers of Christmas food and candy. There may be one last circle dance. During Christmas, Swedes dance around the Christmas tree, often going around the whole house. This marks the end of the Christmas season in Sweden. Now the decorations are put away and the Christmas tree is thrown out.
So this is the overview of how the Swedish Christmas is celebrated. In part 2, we’ll examine the unique Swedish Christmas traditions. See you then. Thanks for listening!
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Traditions Unique to Swedish Christmas
Swedish Christmas Extravaganza Part 2
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Transcript
Hej! Welcome back to the Swedish Christmas Extravaganza. The topic for today is some of the unique Swedish Christmas traditions.
Let’s start with the name. The Swedish name for Christmas is jul. It’s a word for festival or holiday, and it’s the same as the English Yule. The pre-Christian jul was also called midvinterblot, midwinter sacrifice. During pre-Christian times, jul was the main festival of the year.
This painting, Midvinterblot, was made by Carl Larsson in 1915. It shows how a Swedish king was sacrificed to the gods after three years of bad harvests. Several men had already been sacrificed without a turn of luck. The scene is based on a saga written around the 900s. It’s not clear whether the story is true or not.
You may have heard of Lucia. On the 13th of December, Swedes celebrate St Lucy’s Day, Luciadagen.
The first official Saint Lucy celebration was held in 1892 at a museum in Stockholm. It was shown as a regional tradition that was largely unknown at the time. This Saint Lucy wore a white gown with a red ribbon around her waist. She had candles in her hair and handed out drinks. In the 1920s, the celebrations had grown so that Saint Lucy was in the company of singing women dressed in white. This is very much like it’s celebrated today.
Saint Lucy celebrations are performed in schools and churches, mainly by children. The singers may bring gingerbread and saffron flavored buns. Sometimes it is done as concerts by adult choirs.
The tradition of Saint Lucy has old roots. It goes back to the Catholic times, before the 16th century. Saint Lucy’s Day was first mentioned as a significant religious occasion in the southwest of Sweden in the 1470s.
At this time, Sweden, like most of Europe, was following the Julian calendar. In this calendar, the 13th of December was at winter solstice. So the celebration of Saint Lucy was a celebration of the light returning.
Eventually, most countries switched to the Gregorian calendar. Sweden did so in the 1750s. The celebration of Saint Lucy remained on the 13th of December, even though it was now nearly two weeks earlier than before. After Sweden became Lutheran in the 1500s, anything having to do with a Catholicism was banned. The celebrations of Saint Lucy continued, but you could perhaps say they were not of the time.
The way Saint Lucy was celebrated varied. Being Saint Lucy could be an honor, or it could be the opposite. Some dressed up in their most beautiful clothes, others wore the most hideous outfits possible. Saint Lucy could be a woman, or a man, or even a bunch of people.
In 1886, the Saint Lucy’s Day celebrations were described by an encyclopedia as an old custom, still celebrated in the west and south of Sweden. On this day, a girl would come into the house in the early morning, dressed in white with burning candles in her hair. She served coffee and beer and vodka from a tray she was carrying. After everyone got up and dressed, they spent the morning eating and drinking. Glögg, the Swedish mulled wine, was always on the menu. The encyclopedia also claims that Saint Lucy’s Day was popular for taking a nightly walk, noting any signs of how the coming year would go. The signs were often supernatural, such as a mythical creature or a mouse working with harvesting. That was an indication that next the harvest would be good.
Those mythical creatures, it could be a tomte. It looks similar to a Christmas elf. But the similarities are only skin deep. The tomte was a short male creature. He was wearing a red pointed hat and dressed in a grey coat and pair of pants.
The word tomte has the same origin as the Swedish word for lot, a piece of land. For each lot was one tomte and keeping him happy was crucial. He could help or hinder the people, depending on how he was treated. He would often bring hay and grain from the neighbors.
The tomte usually kept to the stables and was rarely seen. He was lazy and unreliable. To appease this creature, people sometimes gifted him food and clothes, but you’d have to be careful, because he was very irritable. To this day, it happens that Swedes leave a bowl of porridge for the tomte on Christmas Eve.
The American Santa Claus came to Sweden in the 1800s. This tradition was merged with the tomte. Together they formed the Swedish version jultomten, a nice, full-sized man wearing red.
With that, we’ve made it to Christmas Eve. This is still the day for the family celebrations in Sweden. It’s the day the gifts are exchanged. In Sweden, the Christmas gift is called julklapp. This can best be translated to “Christmas knock.” The word goes back to an old Swedish tradition. It took place on the morning of Christmas Eve. You’d hear a knock on the door or window and a package was thrown in. The giver was anonymous. The gifts could be a straw figure or a funny gift.
This tradition was eventually replaced by the custom of exchanging gifts. It spread to Sweden from Germany. The Christmas knock-gifts were delivered on the morning of Christmas Eve. At some point, this shifted. Already in the 1880s, Swedes were exchanging gifts in the evening of Christmas Eve. The gifts are placed under the Christmas tree. When the evening comes, the jultomte distributes them.
This concludes our look into the unique Swedish Christmas traditions.
In the next part, we’ll look at the food that Swedes have in the Christmas season. See you then!
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A taste of Swedish Christmas
Swedish Christmas Extravaganza Part 3
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Transcript
Welcome to the world of the Swedish Christmas food!
We’ll delve into the dishes, the pastry and the drinks that our Swedish ancestors enjoyed.
Food is one of the most personal aspects of holiday traditions. I know from my own experience that as my family has grown and changed, I’ve discovered new foods. Some things have been completely new to me, but at the same time they were essential to those I celebrate with.
Here we’ll discover the most common and typical customs of Swedish Christmas food.
The main course during the Swedish Christmas celebrations, is actually a buffet. That’s how most holidays food is served in Sweden. You may have heard of the smorgasbord, or smörgåsbord as it’s called in Sweden. That’s the typical Swedish buffet that’s served at holidays and celebrations. There are some tweaks and adaptations for each holiday. The Christmas version of this buffet is called julbord. Swedes often have Christmas buffets throughout December. The main occasion is on Christmas Eve.
The star of the buffet is the Christmas ham. It has roots back to before the Middle Ages, all the way back to the Vikings. This was around the years 750 to 1,000.
At this time, it was believed that the Vikings killed in battle spent eternity in Valhalla. Here, they would fight giants. Every evening there was a feast. Among the food served was a pig named Sæhrímnir. Each night, the Vikings ate him, and the next day he came alive again. This is the origin of the Swedish Christmas ham.
Today, the Christmas ham is still served on almost all Swedish Christmas buffets. The ham is first salted and boiled. The broth is saved for later — we’ll come back to that. The ham is then covered with a layer of eggs, mustard and breadcrumbs, and baked in the oven.
Another classic is the brown bread vörtbröd. It’s baked with worth or beer. Other ingredients are bitter orange peel, anise, fennel seeds, and raisins. Remember the ham broth from before? This bread is traditionally dipped in the broth. The English word for this is sop. In Swedish, it has a very no nonsense-name. It’s simply called “Dip in the pot” or Dopp i grytan. In older times, this was a way to get some of meatiness from the broth on days without meat.
Let’s not forget the lutefisk. The English language has borrowed this word from Norwegian. The Swedish name is lutfisk. It doesn’t have the e in the middle. If you’ve never tasted this fish, it’s hard to describe. It’s has a very unusual texture. It can best be described as wobbly. It tastes … almost nothing.
This is less peculiar when you know what goes into preparing the lutefisk. It’s made from a white fish, the type varies. First, the fish is dried. So this is a form of preservation. When the time comes to cook it, the first step is to soak it in water for a few days. At the end, it’s soaked in a solution of sodium carbonate. It’s then carefully heated.
Lutefisk is typically served with potatoes, green peas and a white sauce; a Béchamel sauce. This dish has roots back to the Middle Ages. In this time, Swedes were still Catholics. The lutefisk was an option for the holidays when meat was not allowed.
I’ll quickly mention some of the other dishes with ancient roots, before we wrap up the section of the Christmas buffet. We have the jellied veal, served with pickled beets. The liver pátê is another item that gets seasoned with allspice around Christmas. The same goes for the meatballs. At Christmas, they are served without gravy. We also have the graved salmon, the simmered red cabbage and of course plenty of boiled potatoes. Potatoes gained popularity in Sweden in the 1800s, so they don’t have the same old roots as the others.
A common drink in Sweden was svagdricka. It’s a malt based beverage, similar to a low-alcohol beer. It was popular on any day of the year from the Middle Ages until the early 1900s. It was typically served at the Christmas buffet as well. Some still enjoy it, but the drink is rarely found in the stores nowadays.
So those are the main dishes from the Christmas buffet. Let’s switch to Christmas baking! The Swedish Christmas requires saffron buns and ginger snaps. There are of course more pastries, but these are the most important ones.
The saffron buns are served by St Lucy on December 13th, but they are eaten throughout the season. The classic shape for saffron buns is rolled up into an S shape with a raisin in each of the two centers. It’s made from the same type of dough that’s used to make regular buns. If you don’t like saffron, you can skip it or add cardamom instead, like is often done in Sweden. This is actually how they were made traditionally on the West coast of Sweden. Here in Gothenburg, where I live, some of the stores still sell them without saffron.
And the ginger snaps. Compared to other ginger bread cookies, the Swedish ones are really thin. They are about 3 mm or 1/8 of an inch. The name in Sweden is pepparkakor, which means pepper cookies. Initially they were seasoned with pepper and sold at pharmacies. Now they are typically seasoned with ginger, cloves and cinnamon. Some add bitter orange peel as well.
Starting at the first Sunday of Advent, or before, Swedes drink a lot of glögg. If you don’t read the umlauts, you may have seen this as glogg, but in Swedish it’s glögg. It’s a glühwein type of drink, a hot flavored wine. In my experience, glögg is a bit sweeter than the German type. It needs to be simmered slowly. You want to remove it from the heat once the white steam builds up above the pan. Pour it into a small cup and add blanched almonds and raisins. And enjoy!
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There’s more…
PS. Top photo of Christmas celebration, bourgeois home around the turn of the 20the century. A family having coffee in the salon. Union flag on the table. Photographer unknown, 1895 – 1905, Nordiska museet NMA.0036172. Public Domain Mark.