Cartoons, wreaths and that jolly old jultomten

With food, drink and candles, Sweden embraces Christmas

A straw goat, the "julbock," stands guard over the presents under the tree

By Beth Nissen
CNN.com Senior Correspondent

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (CNN) -- Sweden is a Mecca for yulophiles, those merry souls who love Christmas. The Swedish jul (pronounced "yule") season is a month-long national festival of lighted candles, savory feasts and strong spirits -- celebratory and liquid.

And it is beautiful. Every time I've been in Sweden at this time of year -- 10 visits now, by my count -- I've seen scenes of Christmas-card loveliness: in rural areas, Hansel-and-Gretel cottages frosted with snow; in the capital city of Stockholm, elegant stone buildings curved along the icy harbor; and everywhere, the inverted "V"'s of electric candles shining from windows.

Sweden at Christmas reveals itself as a contradiction -- an ultramodern country with a reverence for centuries-old tradition.

PHOTO GALLERY Click for scenes of Sweden at Christmastime     SWEDISH GNOMES Read an excerpt from Scandinavian Folk & Fairy Tales -- The Tomten     TASTY TREATS Swedish sensations for your holiday buffet     MESSAGE BOARD Where are you traveling for the holidays?

The same people who have one of the world's highest per-capita rates of cell-phone ownership, and are responsible for all that sleek futuristic furniture, revert at this time of year to lighting their homes with tallowy candles, half-believing in the Swedish version of leprechauns, and serving lutfisk, a gelatinous fish dish that dates back to medieval times, has been reviled by successive generations of Swedes ever since, yet is stoically served as part of the Christmas smorgasbord every year.

Waves of immigrants from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa are making their mark on Sweden, yet the country is still remarkably uniform in culture and custom.

Most of Sweden's 8.5 million people are Lutheran, by birth if not in practice. On December 24, the day in Sweden when the Christmas feast is served and the presents are opened, millions of Swedes put an array of identical foods on the table and practice the same rituals at the same hour.

Inverted "V"s of electric candles shine from almost every Swedish window at Christmas

By now, the entire nation has been celebrating the season for more than three weeks. Christmas in Sweden begins unofficially on the first day of December, when Swedes open the first little cardboard door on their secular Advent calendars to begin the countdown to the big day.

The Christmas season begins more officially on December 13, Santa Lucia Day. By tradition, the eldest daughter in the household rises early that morning, and, dressed in a white gown with a crown of lighted candles on her head, serves her parents a breakfast-in-bed of steaming coffee and warm saffron buns.

The Lucia (pronounced "loo-SEE-ah") tradition has become so popular that there are now parades of white-robed blondes in perilous open-flame headgear serving trays of goodies in schools, office buildings and shopping malls all over Sweden, all through December.

The lighted candles worn by these fair maidens is of crucial importance. Christmas in Sweden is all about light - a blessed and literal ray of hope in the dark, cold days of the long Swedish winter, which can arrive in early October and last into late April. Streets, apartment windows, and shops along Valhallavagen (the Champs d'Elysses of Stockholm) are bedecked with entire galaxies of tiny white lights.

Homes also are decorated, although never with the ostentatious, American-style displays of plastic Santas and reindeer on rooftops, and Las Vegas-scale lights in the shrubbery. Most Swedish houses are adorned simply, with a plain evergreen garland or wreath on the front door, and an electric star or battery-run candelabra of seven "candles" in every window.

This home, in the Stockholm suburb of Lidingo, is decorated with a simple wreath and an electric star

Inside, there is usually a Christmas tree, a tradition that arrived from Germany only in the last century. The tree of choice is the Norway spruce, which can seem a bit spindly to those who are used to the lush, full look of firs. But the spruce's spare look perfectly matches austere Lutheran traditions.

That austerity is further evident in the traditional ornaments on the tree: small hearts, angels and circles made of twisted straw. From pagan times, straw was used in midwinter rituals to appease the gods and ensure a good harvest in the coming year. With the arrival of Christianity, straw took on an added religious association with the manger that cradled the infant Jesus.

A straw goat, made from thick yellow straw bound by lengths of red ribbon, stands guard over the presents under the tree. In olden days, Christmas presents were brought to each household by a person wearing a straw mask of a goat -- one of the oldest symbols in Sweden. The arrival of the "Christmas goat" is depicted memorably in the classic 1947 Swedish children's book, "Petter and Lotta's Christmas," by Elsa Beskow.

The story of Petter and his sister Lotta is as much a Swedish Christmas tradition as "The Nutcracker." In fact, the Royal Swedish Ballet has incorporated the story into their annual production of Tchaikovsky's classic Christmastime ballet.

In the Swedish version, Clara, the central character in "Nutcracker," is replaced by Petter and Lotta; the mysterious Herr Drosselmeyer is replaced by a figure in a straw goat mask. Petter and Lotta find themselves in a dream world full of recognizably Swedish Christmas symbols: a dancing gingerbread man and gingerbread woman; a row of dancers dressed like traditional Swedish peppermints.

Eva Nissen, principal dancer with the Royal Swedish Ballet (and my sister) dances the role of Queen of the Snowflakes

But my favorite part of the Swedish "Notknapparen" is usually the Dance of the Snowflakes, featuring the Queen of the Snowflakes -- a role often danced by my youngest sister, Eva Nissen, a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet.

Eva has been with the Royal Ballet for 15 years, following her early training in the United States and London. She and her Swedish husband, Peder Lewin, a former member of the company, are rarely able to come to the United States for Christmas because the full schedule of "Nutcracker" performances keeps them close to home. So those in our family who can manage the trans-Atlantic trip come to spend a traditional Swedish Christmas with them.

We try to arrive by December 23, which is called Little Christmas. For grown-ups, this day is generally devoted to a blizzard of Christmas preparations -- baking cookies, wrapping presents and staying up until the single-digit hours working on the "some assembly required" toys.

American adults do this on Christmas Eve, but in Sweden, December 24 is the day the presents are opened and the Christmas feast is savored. That feast is day-long, or at least seems so.

In many Swedish homes, the 24th starts with a bowl of creamy rice porridge, which is like a warm rice pudding, served with hot milk and cinnamon. My sister usually serves thick slices of toasted black bread, slathered with sweet butter and cloudberry or lingonberry jam. My brother-in-law Peder adds warmed milk to mugs of dark Swedish coffee that has a chocolate-rich aroma, and actually tastes as good as it smells.

Pepparkakor, or ginger snap, Christmas cookies in the traditional heart shape

Breakfast cleared, we all set to preparing the dishes for the julbord, or Christmas table. By mid-morning, the Christmas ham is in the oven, and all available hands are put to work cutting great heaps of potatoes into little matchstick-sized pieces for the Jansson's Temptation, a potato-and-anchovy casserole that tastes a lot better than it sounds. (See Jansson's Frestelse recipe on Food page)

Peder is often excused from potato-slicing to make his Christmas pigs. He shapes eight-ounce chunks of marzipan into little replicas of roast pigs, the kind that are served on silver trays with apples in their mouths. He covers the marzipan pigs with a thick coating of dark chocolate, then wraps them with ribbons around their necks, and sets off from the house to make sweet piggy deliveries to family and friends.

At 3 p.m. on Christmas Eve, everyone takes a break for one of the more peculiar and more recent Swedish Christmas traditions, established in the 1960s. Virtually the entire nation -- millions of Swedes -- gather in front of the television set to watch an hour of classic Disney cartoons that have been subtitled or dubbed in Swedish.

Multiple generations of entire families sit together and chuckle over the antics of Kalle Anka (Donald Duck). They watch a subtitled Mickey Mouse and Goofy cartoon; an excerpt from the animated film "Cinderella," with the mice singing in high-pitched Swedish; and a scene from "Snovit and the Seven Dwarfs."

In the middle of the cartoon hour - usually just after the Swedish-singing mice - Peder passes around a small tray of miniature glass mugs of glogg (pronounced "glug"), a hot mulled wine, or spiced punch, with "punch" being the operative word. This Swedish potion of warmed red wine and Madeira, poured over blanched almonds and raisins, doesn't seem as heady as it is. Glogg is the Swedish word for "glow" -- and after even one three-ounce muglet of the stuff, the name is fully explained.

Chef Gunnar Strom of Ulriksdals Wardshus, a country inn just north of Stockholm, with a skillet of Swedish meatballs, a traditional Christmas treat

After Jiminy Cricket has wished everyone "God jul!" -- "Good (Merry) Christmas!" -- everyone makes their gloggy way to the Christmas smorgasbord, which translates literally as "bread-and-butter table." There is indeed bread there - baskets of crackery crispbread, loaves of pungent dark beer-bread - and pots of yellow butter. But there is so very much more.

You can see the history of Sweden by looking at the traditional dishes on the table, many made with the foods that sustained 17th- and 18th-century Swedes through long, iced-over winters: pickled fish; smoked meats; cellar potatoes; hard breads; hardy vegetables like cabbage, brussels sprouts and kale.

Cold foods are served first, usually led by a stream of herring dishes. Herring in mustard sauce. Herring in wine. Herring in cream sauce. Herring pickled with onions. Herring chopped with beets. Herring au gratin. Cured herring. Smoked herring. And a special Christmas herring in tomato-dill sauce.

The herringfest is followed by more cold seafood: transparently thin slices of smoked salmon; oily strips of smoked eel, little pink commas of baby shrimp. For contrast, there often is a bowl of cucumber salad, a board of sharp cheeses, and liver pate spread on crispbread.

Then come the hot foods, crowned by platters of pork in several forms: thick slices of sugar-glazed ham; tender roasted spare ribs; little herbed links of sausage. To one side is the baking dish of Jansson's Temptation, simmering from the oven, and on the other, a chafing dish of nutmeg-laced Swedish meatballs. (See recipe for Swedish meatballs on the Food page.) Other bowls hold boiled potatoes, boiled red cabbage, stuffed cabbage rolls, steamed or creamed kale (a bitter cousin of spinach).

One Christmas, we went to the home of Peder's parents for the jul feast, which provided my first and I pray only exposure to the legendary and dreaded lutfisk.

A man dressed as the "Christmas goat" delivers presents; taken from the beloved Swedish children's book, "Petter and Lotta's Christmas," by Elsa Beskow

The word translates as "lye-fish," which, I am sorry to say, is an accurate description. Lutfisk is a form of dried cod that has been cured in lye, reconstituted by lengthy soaking, then boiled or baked. The result is a gelatinous mass that tastes like a cross between lard and soap (a description that unfairly insults the taste of soap). Many Swedes try to make lutfisk more palatable by pouring on cream sauce and adding heavy grindings of coarse, black pepper. This does not help.

You can kill the taste of lutfisk -- believe me, you'll want to -- with a glass of Spendrup's Christmas Ale, or an icy bottle of excellent Scandinavian beer. Many Swedes also punctuate their dinner with small frosted shots of Aquavit, Absolut vodka or schnapps.

Dinner concludes with dessert: another array of cheese; bowls of dried figs or boiled prunes; and plates of Christmas cookies, which always include Pepparkakor, or Swedish ginger snaps, often cut into little heart shapes. (See recipe for Pepparkakor on Food page.)

Swedes willing to take the risk of exploding will sometimes have their rice porridge at this point. By tradition, a single blanched almond is put into the porridge pot, and any single person who gets the almond in his or her bowl, it is said, will be married in the coming year. (See recipe for Rice Porridge on Food page.)

At the conclusion of the meal, it is time for the presents. More and more families simply open presents placed under the tree the night before, but it is traditional, especially in households with small children, for the presents to be delivered by a family member, friend or neighbor dressed up as the jultomten, the Christmas gnome, in a fake white beard and red Santa cap.

For centuries, Swedes believed in the presence of the tomten, a mythic creature in the extended fairy and leprechaun family, who was thought to live under the floor of the house or barn, bringing good luck and mischief in equal measure. Every country in Scandinavia has some equivalent form of gnomes or elves or brownies. (In Denmark, the elf is called the nissen -- my surname.)

It was always tradition to set out a bowl of porridge or mush for the tomten on Christmas Eve. On that night, it was thought, the "little people" would decide the family's or the farm's fortunes for the coming year. When Saint Nicholas was imported from Germany in the 1800s, the Swedes grafted the concept onto their local tradition, creating the Christmas Tomten. In the 1880s, Swedish artist Jenny Nystrom drew the jultomten as a white-bearded gnome in a red cone cap, the image now reproduced in everything from china to marzipan.

Jultomten impersonators hand out presents, or julklapp -- which translates, oddly, as "Christmas knocks." The name comes from an ancient gift-giving tradition that is part prank, part breaking-and-entering. The gift-giver would creep stealthily to a friend or relative's door, knock hard, open the door and throw the present inside the house -- then run like heck to get away without being seen.

The recipient would have to figure out the identity of the giver by deciphering a little verse written on the wrapping. Some Swedes still spend hours writing clever rhymes to attach to each gift, suggesting its contents, or teasing the recipient.

In the last hours of Christmas Eve, many Swedes head to midnight church services. A few Christmases ago, my sisters and I walked to a small Lutheran church in Eva's neighborhood, set like a miniature stone castle in a snowy courtyard. The church was filled with the aromas of fresh evergreen, hot wax, and wool coats wet with snow.

The pastor read the lesson in Swedish, but you could still understand the cornerstone words of the story and the faith: Caesar Augustus. Bethlehem. Jesus. We closed by singing "Silent night" in Swedish: "Stilla natt, heliga natt."

Many Swedes go to church Christmas morning, although even in the rural north, they don't race their sleds to church at 3 a.m., the way they once did. Most just stay home, working on intricate, 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzles, reading newly unwrapped books, napping and digesting.

Christmas in Sweden doesn't end on Christmas Day: Post-jul parties and gatherings continue for several days, although most people go back to work shortly after the new year. The Swedes, like other Christians, celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6, but then continue merry-making for another week, until January 13.

That day is called the Knut, an especially silly name that sounds like something from a Monty Python sketch. On Knut, it is traditional for family and friends to go from house to house, taking the ornaments off the Christmas trees. Traditionalists then hang small paper cones filled with caramel candies on the stripped branches. Children eat the candies, and the trees are then thrown out into the snow -- marking the end of a Christmas season that is a gift in itself.

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