Christmastime in Sweden

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — The sun sets this time of year just after 2 p.m., a brief and somewhat dim journey across a sky that may bring rain or snow, but not much in the way of light.

But despite darkness that even locals call disorienting and somewhat depressing, December brings magic, as well — from the lovely maiden with the crown of candles to the skinny little Santa-like fellow who totes smiles and gifts to Swedish children.

The magic can be found in warm saffron bread and abundant feasts and marzipan candies and makeshift market stalls bursting with flowers and toys and handicrafts. It is in the very air, a Christmas concert going on somewhere in this city of islands nearly any time of day. Even the too-short days are beginning, slowly, to lengthen now.

It's Christmastime, a family-centered celebration that stretches from late November to 20 days beyond Christmas itself, when families gather for one more party to take down the Christmas tree and other decorations.

According to Sweden's tourist bureau, in this country that is predominantly evangelical Lutheran, the Christmas celebrations are a "motley blend of pagan rituals, Viking rites, Christian traditions, folkloric forest spirts, southern European saints, German customs and characters from American soft-drink advertisements."

The results, it notes, are both "diverse" and "extravagant."

Utahns with ties to Sweden remember the holiday fondly.

Vivianne Forsyth, president of Utah's Swedish Heritage Society, left Sweden to study at Brigham Young University. "It has never felt like Christmas since the last Christmas I spent in Sweden in 1980," she says. "Sweden is very dark this time of year, and the evenings are long. To compensate, Swedes hang lighted stars and put electric candleholders in the windows, which light up the winter darkness. I've also missed the cozy feeling these decorations give. Every home looked so homey to me with the warm, inviting lights. ..."

When she was a child, an Advent calendar always hung on the wall as Christmas approached. "With great excitement, we couldn't wait to open the next window. It was tempting to cheat, but we didn't," Forsyth says. "Mom had a calendar she made in cross-stitch. She would hang a small gift by each number, and we would take turns opening it."

More than 20 years after she served a mission for the LDS Church in Stockholm, Keri Skousen's own Christmas traditions in north Orem are enhanced by the Christmases she enjoyed across the ocean.