Happy Easter everyone! Glad Påsk!

Easter in Sweden is a big deal, though it's more celebrated the day before Easter than actually on Easter Sunday. Here a few Swedish traditions for Easter that I've noticed:

1. Little children walk around with bags and do their version of "trick-or-treating" on Easter, what we do around Halloween. They dress up as witches as well.

2. Witches are everywhere: hanging off ceilings, sitting on tables, etc. Clearly, they have importance around Easter.

3. Candy. Candy everywhere. Not much different from the US. But most stores have bowls of candy that you can just take and eat at your leisure while shopping at their store. Easter bunnies with baskets of jelly beans walk around the mall too.

4. Easter weekend is long. Like in the US, most places have Good Friday off, but here many places are off on Monday as well.

5. The big Easter meal is the day before. Most people have the traditional family get together and meal the day before Easter. The meal usually consists of fish and is in a smörgåsbord (buffet) style, like most big Swedish meals. My fancy Easter meal consisted of microwaveable pizza.

6. Some food around just for Easter: Semla, the cream puff type pastry that I mentioned in a previous post and påskmust, a cola drunken only around Easter and Christmas.

On Easter, I decided to experience some of the culture of Sweden and went to a Catholic mass in English, even though many Swedes aren't very religious.