In Sweden, the four Sunday’s before Christmas are celebrated as Advent. I’m sure it’s a church thing everywhere, but I don’t know if it’s actually celebrated in the same way anywhere outside the Nordic countries. I guess you’d have to be very religious to feel the need to have so many pre-parties to celebrate the approach of Jesus’ birth.
In Sweden and Finland, though, it’s turned into this whole family and friend tradition, where you invite people over on Sunday afternoon for gingerbread cookies and saffron buns, light candles and drink glögg (basically, mulled wine). It must be the darkness. I’m sure all the fall and winter traditions in Sweden involving lighting candles, when it comes down to it, are basically just an excuse to do just that, light tons of candles.
It was second of Advent. We were three Swedes in Banfora, with no gingerbread cookies or saffron buns or candles. But, we found Sangria in the grocery store. With a little imagination, this particular brand of sangria tasted quite like glögg. You know, sweet wine with some kind of spicing. Traditionally, you should drink glögg warm with almonds and raisins in it. But we couldn’t heat the sangria. We simply had to make do with what we had.
So we celebrated second of Advent by drinking lukewarm sangria with dried mangoes and freshly peeled peanuts in it. Considering the circumstances, it felt good enough. Almost like Christmas, even. [The photo below taken by Elli.]
Katja Malmborg 