Tomorrow it’s Midsummer Eve here in Sweden.
I will now tell you little about this traditional feast.
In my family and neighborhood it’s a bit special I think…
The preparations start the night before. We go out and pick as many flowers as we can carry and put them in buckets with water. I’ll come back to this later…
We always celebrate midsummer on a Friday. We go up at eight o’clock to cut down some trees to decorate our houses. I also decorate my car with flowers and leaves, flags and balloons…
At nine we deliver the flowers we picked the night before, at the beach where we start to decorate the 15 meter pole witch later will be raised as a giant fallos symbol… “Midsommarstång”
Ten o’clock we get into our decorated cars and start the caravan round in the neighborhood. The louder the better, so we blow our horns and sing and scream “Glad Midsommar! “ to the people we wake up on our way… This caravan contains about 40 decorated vehicles… Some years I’m the leader of this event…. It’s crazy and very much fun J
After this we drive home and park the car for the rest of the day….
Now it’s time to dress in our finest summer clothes and make wreaths of flowers for the young girls to wear… Then we go to my parents’ home for lunch. A lot of people are gathered there, my sister and her husband and children drive 450 km every year to celebrate with us… There is also close neighbors, relatives, and friends… For lunch we have “Sill och nubbe”- herring and vodka shots…
We sing “ snapsvisor” songs about drinking and have nice conversations… When it’s time for the coffee and strawberry cake everyone is a bit drunk….
Now it’s time to go back to the beach and the giant flowered fallos who now reaches for the sky…
A little orchestra is now playing traditional Swedish songs and all the people (a couple of hundred) starts to sing and dance around the pole…. Many of the songs are really stupid but we love them….
“Små grodorna” for example… Small frogs, small frogs are funny to se, No ears, no ears or tails they have….. and now the crowd start to jump like frogs and make frog sounds… Koackackack koackackack koackackackackaaaaaaa……
Another example s the song “ En riktigt bussig svärmor vill jag ha “ a really nice mother in law I want… we sing this phrase over and over again, almost 200 times I think, while we’re dancing a great dance I cant describe in words…. And in the middle of all this – the giant dick!
It sounds crazy I know, and it is and it’s a lot of fun… and remember… We are all a little drunk….
After the dancing and the games for the children, jumping in sacks and that kind of things, we return to my parents house for wine, snacks and the family games…
The family games are a competition between the families in five games. Boule, Dart, Throwing things in a bucket, Throwing boots and things that… At the beginning it’s always very serious but it usually doesn’t take long time before the first cheating…. My mother does the counting and for some reason her team usually wins…. This is fun and a lot of cheep tricks.. The winning team gets lollipops…
After the family games we bring our wineglasses to the dinner table… usually a buffet. No one is really hungry but we eat anyway and have some more wine…
Now is the time when we discover that the teenagers are missing…
After a few phone calls to check where they are and that they are ok, we start with the drinks…
Then it’s time to go for a walk to check up on the teenagers….
It usually ends up in some neighbor’s garden with more drinks….
As we live in the country of the midnight sun, it’s hard to know what time it is…. The party’s going on as long as someone is awake….
The morning after the neighborhood is very calm and quiet….
There are no cars in the street until late afternoon…..
Now I have to go to bed… It’s a busy day tomorrow…..
ASATRON 