Winter solstice has many different names in Finnish.
Talvipäivä,
Talvipäivän tasaus,
Keskitalven juhla,
Which literally means midwinter festival.
Winter solstice takes place between the 20th and 22nd of December.
Finland is located up north,
So this time period in Finland is pretty dark.
Sun doesn't stay up very long.
If there is snow,
The snow usually reflects the light and it is quite beautiful.
Of course in the summer,
Around the summer solstice,
The sun never goes down.
For me it's normal,
But for those who haven't experienced that,
It can be rather exotic.
I am myself quite big fan of winter solstice.
I think it is a beautiful festival and not something that was only celebrated in Finland,
But it was celebrated by the Druids and also all over Scandinavian countries.
The element of winter solstice is the earth.
In Finnish folklore,
The world was made of three layers.
Ylinen,
The upper world,
The world of the spirits.
Keskinen,
The middle world,
World of magical beings and humans.
Then Alinen,
The underworld,
The world of the dead,
The unconsciousness.
Winter itself is connected to the world of Alinen.
The time period from the middle of autumn to January was known as jakoaika,
The dividing time.
In Norse tradition,
It is called as the wild hunt.
That is when Odin is catching evil spirits in the sky.
In Finland,
During jakoaika,
The spirits had the access to walk among the living.
Winter solstice was one of those days when you could be in contact with these spirits,
Same way as during kekri.
The darkness and Alinen was feared and respected,
Especially before electricity and heated apartments.
The time was cruel and living conditions could be very harsh.
People prepared for the winter all year around,
Gathering food in storage.
If there was lots of snow,
The weight of the snow would break ceilings.
It wasn't easy to live in Finland in the past,
Especially during winter.
Winter solstice was also hopeful.
There was a promise of spring.
After winter solstice,
The nights became shorter and days longer and sun was returning.
There were all kinds of ways to keep the evil spirits away.
Fires were lit outside.
Candles and lanterns were burned.
The darkness was fought against with light.
The older ones entertained the younger folks by telling old stories about the tonttu and the fairies.
Children played together and fortune-telling was very common.
People made divinations for the coming year.
Who was going to get married?
Have babies?
Who was going to become rich?
Christmas is joulu in Finnish,
Coming from the Swedish word jul,
Which is the old Scandinavian winter solstice festival,
But nowadays jul means Christmas in Sweden as well.
Christmas was brought to Finland in the Middle Ages,
But it really established its position as a holiday in the 19th century.
Originally,
The biggest festival in Finland was kekri,
And even today there are some Finnish Christmas traditions which are based on the old pagan kekri traditions.
When it comes to the Christian tradition,
Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus.
But when it comes to the winter solstice,
When Christmas became the December holiday in Finland,
It pretty much replaced the winter solstice.
The food and being together with family and friends,
Those were all part of the kekri celebration,
But now they became part of Christmas.
Christmas tree tradition arrived to Finland in the 19th century.
The first trees were huge and they were common in aristocrat families,
Where they were mostly shown as status symbols.
Later on,
The Christmas tree tradition spread all over the country.
When winter solstice became more of a secondary holiday,
Christmas Day replaced it as the spell-making magical day,
And the night after Christmas was called taika-yö,
The magic night.
For the people,
It was hidden way to celebrate the old pagan ways.
Different kinds of spells were made during entire Christmas week.
People made spells to get rid of evil spirits,
And they made spells for love and luck.
One of the older Finnish Christmas traditions is the Christmas peace.
Christmas peace begins on Christmas Day and it lasts till the day of nuutti.
In some ways,
The Christmas peace replaced the older dividing time that was connected to kekri.
During this time,
There were certain taboos that people were not allowed to break.
For example,
It was forbidden to hurt animals,
Touch ash,
Cut down trees and do any spinning.
Christmas arrived to Finland in the 17th century,
Around the time when the country was converted from Catholicism to Lutheranism.
The old Finnish name for December was talvikuu,
Which literally means the month of winter.
But in the 17th century,
The name of the month was turned into joulukuu,
Which means the month of Christmas.
Majority of these old kekri traditions slowly merged into Christmas.
When these two holidays mixed up together,
The dining became more festive.
It was believed that the more food you had in the Christmas dinner table,
It symbolized wealth and fertility of the land and even marriages to the daughters of the house.
Back in the days,
Dark flour that was made from rye was used for everyday foods,
And the light flour that was made for special occasions like Christmas.
During every other day of the year,
You would get dark rye bread,
But around Christmas,
You would get light bread and buns.
Porridge was also lighter because it was made from rice and not rye like the everyday porridge.
Light colored foods had certain symbolism.
They could be related to death and the ancestors,
Or to the snow and the returning of the sun.
In the old times,
The Christmas dinner was displayed on the table whole night through so that the spirits and ancestors could take a snack whenever they wanted.
It was also okay for the family members to get up in the night,
Sneak in and have a bite.
Another tradition that is still alive and well is the Christmas sauna.
Like many other things,
This also originates from Kekri.
The Christmas sauna is an old tradition and people took their time to prepare for it.
The warming up the sauna began very early on,
Usually the day before.
These were not modern electric saunas.
The oldest ones were smoke saunas and it took a little longer to warm them up.
The heating of the sauna began in the morning so that all the family members could go into the sauna before the sunset.
After sunset,
It was the turn of the spirits and the ancestors and the invisible folk to go in.
According to some beliefs,
People had to be very quiet in the Christmas sauna.
When you did that,
Mosquitoes and bugs would leave you alone the next summer.
It was forbidden to whistle and to curse in the sauna.
Otherwise,
The spirits could come up with all kinds of punishments.
One of the traditions was to jump into snow and roll in the snow to cool off.
That is something that people still do.
The Finnish sauna is not like the Turkish sauna.
The average temperature is between 70 and 100 Celsius.
That is about between 158 and 212 Fahrenheit.
So cooling off is a good idea.
Nowadays,
When people have electric saunas at home,
People just go to the shower after.
Each family has their own Christmas traditions and I can't really speak for everyone.
Generally speaking,
Finns usually celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve.
We usually exchange gifts in the evening or in the afternoon and people have Christmas dinner at Christmas Eve.
In the families where there are little ones,
Father Christmas might stop by.
