Ask Lemmy

Another Swede here.

This is all true, though I don't have personal experience with going out to the bars.

I thought I'd add some personal details and forgotten details:

1. Personal - The Christmas baking: Every year in late november to early december, our family gathers to make almond mussels, hard cakes eaten with jam and cream, we use a recipe that is more than a century old and make the almond dough/paste from scratch.
2. National - Christmas Donald: every Christmas eve, the entire nation gathers infront of the TV, tuning into the national broadcaster to watch Donald Duck celebrating Christmas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_All_of_Us_to_All_of_You
3. Personal - Decorating the tree: My family has allways had this tradition to only bring the Christmas tree inside on the night before Christmas eve as the Christmas ham is cooking, I have heard that this is common, but I don't know if it is accurate to call it a national tradition... Anyway, we decorate with baubles, lights and other stuff like that, but absolutely no tinsel nor coloured lights, however we do put small baskets with chocolates in them hanging on the branches. An interesting thing is that we in our family has never used glass baubles, that was a rational decision by my mom, she decided on using plastic decorations to avoid us kids getting hurt if we broke one, so when we drop a bauble they just bounce a bit, snd I was really surprised when a bauble dropped and my grandparents house and didn't bounce...
4. National - Dad going out to buy the paper on Christmas eve, classic story to hide who is playing santa, though personally I found the story told at my grandparents house to be smarter... There would be an uncle looking at his watch and exclaiming that he needed to meet up santa and watch his raindeers, perfectly logical, there was a field a block away and it made sense to have santa land there, and obviously you need someone to watch the deers! Perfectly logical!
5. National - Lye treated cod, melted butter and mustard sauce is a great Christmas meal: every Christmas plenty of Swedes put lutfisk on their Christmas table, it is cod with very little taste and the texture of jelly, eaten with potatoes, melted butter and mustard sauce, the sauce is required, and makes the dish excellent! Dad usually makes the sauce from scratch every Christmas eve just before supper.
6. National - the upside down V lights in the window: Sweden at Christmas is VERY dark, snd a tradition is to put pyramid shaped electric candle holders in the windows at first Advent and keep them up until late Jan / early Feb, this is a Christmas decoration, not a political protest as was suggested by a Frenchman my dad worked with at one time.