Christmas sauna - joulusauna

One of the oldest Christmas traditions, that is still alive in Finland, is going to sauna on Christmas. This tradition dates back centuries. It is the custom of the Finnish phesants.

People prepared for sauna well, because many beliefs were connected to the Christmas sauna. Warming of the sauna, before electricity all saunas were heated with wood, became early in the morning or even during the night before the Christmas Eve. Sauna was visited during the daylight time, because it was believed that after the dark the sauna was used by the unseen chracters of the house (ancestors and elves) and the tenants of the house wanted to give those characters peace to visit the sauna. Please remember, that even in the Southern parts of Finland at this time of the year the sun rise at 9.25 and sets at 15.15. The length of the day is not even 6 hours. In up north the sun does not rise at all, so there is only few hours of dusk.

The sauna was also thought to be evil free at all time of the year. That is why no whistling or talking inappropriates were tolerated in the sauna. At Christmas sauna people were supposed to sit totally quiet. The mosquitos would tease next summer the one talking in the Christmas sauna.

Christmas sauna was very import for the Finns. The sauna has always been considered to be a sacred place in Finland. A place to wash and clean oneself, but also a place were to be born, to die and where the deceased were washed before putting to coffin.

Today attending a Christmas sauna lives strong in Finland. Some Finns visit the sauna already on 23rd, but quite many on Christmas Eve. The real Christmas sauna is still warmed up with wood and it is at its best, when there is snow on the ground. The sauna is attended on candle light. Of course the Christmas sauna can also be an electricity heated sauna at candle light or even without the candles.

In Finland only the northern parts are going to have a white Christmas this year, maybe also the Central-Finland. But we can still enjoy the warmth and humidity of the sauna. :)

I wish you all a Peaceful and Merry Christmas! 

Father's Day

On the 2nd Sunday of November we celebrate Father’s Day (isänpäivä) in Finland. This year it will next Sunday 8.11.2015. This is not a very old tradition.

Celebration of Father’s Day dates back in 1980s. The day was marked on the university’s calendar already in 1970-1972, but without a permission. And when it was noticed the date was removed. In year 1987 the university saw that the celebration of Father’s Day had become so popular that it could be marked on the calendar. So the day got the marking and it was also marked as flagging day at the same time. But it is not an official flagging day as is for example Mother’s Day (celebrated on the 2nd Sunday of May in Finland).

Father’s Day is more of a commercial day than actual celebration day in Finland. And in the nordic countries it was first introduced by the Swedish merchants in 1949. Of course we remember our fathers on Father’s Day.

Children make cards and little gifts for their dads at school or daycare. Quite many kindergartens have some kind of coffee or event on the preceeding Friday. In quite many homes father gets to sleep a little bit later on that Sunday and mother and the children bring breakfast to father to bed. In addition to selfmade gifts dad usually gets a bought gift too, like socks, scarf, gloves, aftershave or a book.

And not to forget the grandfathers. Father’s Day is also their day. So remember with card and small gift also the grandfathers.

My family takes the breakfast to bed to our dad. In the afternoon we go for a coffee and cake to my parents’ to celebrate the day with grandfather too. The children’s father usually gets a movie or a book and grandfather gets a book or a new tool for his hobby.

Happy Father’s Day to all fathers and grandfathers!

Spending summer in Finland

I have posted some words about Finnish traditions relating to summer, f. ex how to spend midsummer and the of Jaakko. Still I noticed that I have not made a post about the basic Finnish way of spending summer. So I think it is time to fix that.

Average, working Finn has annually 5 weeks vacation, 4 weeks during summer (May - September) and a week in the winter. Schoolchildren have much more vacation, 10 weeks in the summer, few days during autumn, ca. 2 weeks at Christmas and a week in the winter. 

Having vacation is not even 100 years old tradition. The first law about annual holiday was given as late as 1922. Back then the annual holiday had to be at least 7 days.   After the WWII the law was changed couple of times and in 1977 the right to 4 + 1 weeks was granted to all of those workers, who had worked with the same company at least 10 years. Nowadays we get 2.5 days/month we work, when we have worked at least one year with the same employer.

How do we then spend our vacation? 

Of course the wealthier people and the nobility have had spare time for centuries and have had a house in a city or town and also a manor in the rural area. But it was in the early 19th century, when people started acually have vacation. They acquired a villa outside the city area and the wife with children and most of the servants moved there for the summertime. The husband visited the villa as often as he could. Usually he worked in such position, that the work was stopped during summer for a certain period and the husband could also escape from the city.

In the early 20th century also the working class gradually started to have some holidays. After the WWII lots of people moved to the cities from the countryside, but as their roots where in the parish from where they left, they quite often built a small summer house for the family. The property was very often bought or detached from their parents’ farm’s land.

According to Statistics Finland 34,6 % of working labour have their summer holiday in July. In year 2014 the Finns made 7,9 million trips to abroad, mostly to Estonia, Sweden, Mediterranean and Thailand. In homeland we made 5,9 million trips, which included a paid overnight, and about 19 million overnight trips to own cottage or to visit relatives or friends. There are 500 400 summer cottages in Finland (every 5th household in Finland own a cottage). Of those approximately half have shorter than 65 meters distance to water: lake or sea. So yes, we swim and go to the sauna a lot during our vacation. This summer has not been so warm, so at the moment the surface water temperature is in Southern parts of Finland 17 - 20 C and in Lapland 13 - 15 C, except now in August with highs around + 25 C. So the sauna is really appreciated. If you want to read about the dark side of the cottage living, visit this blog. 

Also every 7th household owns some kind of boat. It can be small rowing boat or a big boat with few cabins.

And during the summer season we prefer to eat fresh strawberries, new potatoes, ice cream and grilled meat or sausages.

We also visit open-air summer theatres, different kind of festivals, weddings (August is the busiest month for weddings), christenings (in 2014 most babies were born in July) and confirmation parties (84 % of Finns at the age of 15 have their confirmation). 

There are 233 open-air summer theatres, which have around 1 million visitors during summer.

Festivals you find from here 

Lots of ways to then spend summer and prepare for fall and winter.

:)

Finnish army

This time of this year seemed a proper time to make a post about the Finnish army. On 27th of April we celebrated the veteran day (Kansallinen veteraanipäivä) remembering all the veterans of our wars. On that date in 1945 the last German troops retreated from Finland to Norway in Lapland and the Lapland War ended. Then on last Sunday, the 17th of May we had the Commemoration Day of Fallen Soldiers (Kaatuneiden muistopäivä) in rememberance of all those soldiers given their lives defending Finland or in peacekeeping duties of UN and on 4th of June we are celebrating the birthday of Marshal of Finland Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, the day nowadays known as the Flag Day of Finnish Defence Forces (Puolustusvoimien lippujuhlapäivä).

We have a conscriptional army in Finland. It roots date back to Swedish regime’s days in medieval times. The king had the right to assign normal phesants to fight in his army. This was found not to produce a good and experienced army, so the base of conscriptional army was laid during the 17th century. Finally there was a system (ruotuväkilaitos) in which a group of houses were obliged to equip a soldier. The soldier was given a small house (torppa) in which to live and which to give him some income. A bigger house (rustholli) equipped a man and a horse to the king’s army and was given some tax reliefs. The officers lived also amoung the common people in houses (puustelli) given to them due to their service in the army. This system was demolished when Finland was attached to Russia. And the czar promised, that Finnish soldiers would never have to fight on foreign soil. Still the Swedish system worked somewhat in Finland during the Russian regime in 19th century.

In 1870 the Russian czar ordered a conscription to come in force in Russia. Finland got once again a seperate law for conscription army and this law came into force in 1878. The time of service was set to three years and about 10 % of the generation was ordered to service based on a lottery. At the turn of the century the Finnish army was ordered to become as part of the Russian army. This realised only partially as the Finns stroke against the new law.

After Finland gained its independency the situation with the army was for some years a bit uncertain. The law of conscriptional army was set in 1922. After that the Finnish army has been based on conscription. The actual base of the independent nation's army was created by the Jägers and their expertise (see post 06.12.2012). 

The constitutional law of Finland says that every Finnish citizen is obliged to defend our country. The conscription is for men between their 18 to 60 years of age. There are at the moment about 1,5 million men in Finland who belong to these age groups. From 1995 onwards the Finnish women have also had the the right to voluntary do the military service. So far about 6 500 women have used their right.

The military service in Finland is 165, 255 or 347 days. The service is done in one or many of the garrisons around Finland. Usually the first two weeks after entering the service the soldiers are not allowed to leave the garrison. After that they get evening and weekend leaves of absence.

In Finland a man can also choose a military service without weapon, a civil service or a total denial from military or civil service. Almost 80 % of the men of the generation choose to do the military service, so about 21 000 men are annually doing their military service. The civil service takes 347 days and includes 1 month training and almost 11 months work service in some governmental etc. facility, f. ex. hospital. Some men choose (70-80 men annually) the total denial, which means 1 year in prison unless they are citizens of Åland or Jehova’s Witnesses who are exempt from military service.

More about the Finnish army can be found here.

Visiting a home in Finland

Spring is almost here and folks are starting to go to their summer cottages. But still it is good time to invite guests and have nice time with friends and family.

So if you get invited to visit a home in Finland what to bring, when to leave, what’s going to happen? Here is some information about how we usually visit.

The invitation is quite often very informal, most commonly given vocally or by SMS. Be sure to answer the same way, even when you cannot go. If it is not a party, the host will try to settle a new date with you. If you do not want to go for a visit, express it clearly in the first place. The Finns are used to direct answers.

Of course arrive on time, but not more than 5 - 10 minutes ahead. If for reason or another you are going to be late, send a message to the host and give a new estimated time of arrival and a good reason for being late. A Finn will understand. :)

When entering a private home remember to take off your shoes just inside the front door. Yes, take off the shoes. It’s a tradition in Finland that at private home we never wear outside shoes indoor. One can have so called visiting shoes, if one does not want to walk on socks. When visiting a summer cottage, you can ask the host, that should I take off my shoes or leave them on. In most of the cottages I have visited the shoes should be taken off when entering the premises.

What to bring then? Flowers or a bottle of wine is always a good choice. So is something from your home country. Some Finns enjoy traditional souvenir from visitor’s home country and some don’t. But the Finns are usually quite polite and do not say, if they do not like something. 

If invited for coffee, you will be served coffee and biscuits, coffee cake buns, cake and maybe something salty. Depending on the home the coffee table can be very plentiful or quite poor. And usually this has nothing do with the wealth of the family. My family’s tradition has been for decades to give the visitors a plentiful coffee table. I have been taught to always have something to serve also for surprise visitors.

If then invited for lunch or dinner, be prepared for food with Finnish or foreign twist, depending once again on the host. I myself try to offer something traditional but still modern Finnish food for our guests. I commonly serve meat or fish, if somebody is not allergic to fish. During lunch I serve water and milk with the food. On dinner I serve water and wine and/or beer, depending on what the guests prefer.

Most Finns know how to consume alcohol wisely and do not try to get guests drunk and drink them under the table. Most of the Finns can also speak at least English, but we are usually quite shy, so prefer only to speak Finnish. In Finland you do not usually bump into situation where on dinner table everybody else speak Finnish, which you don’t speak and do not understand. The Finns tend to speak then English and try to make the foreigner feel comfortable.   

And few words for the upcoming summer time and cottage visits. If you are invited to a private summer cottage, take food or wine with you. Something that is easily stored, does not require cool temperatures and is useful. Quite many cottages are located far from civilisation and require the hosts some extra effort to get all the food and drinks there. So food and drink presents are highly valued. In summer cottage you can also offer to help the hosts. Help is also highly appreciated. In many cottages modern amenities are not all present. This may mean that water is brought in from outdoor well or that dishes are washed manually and even some places have no electricity, while that has become rare.

Enjoy visiting Finland!

Postcards

Easter is closing up and we Finns are really good at sending postcards.

First some figures to give base to which compare. There are ca. 5,4 million people living in Finland. We have about 9,3 million cellular subscriptions and annually we send 3,8 billion SMS. 

And annually Finns send approx. 65 million postcards. For Christmas we send around 50 million postcards. We are one of the leading countries in sending Christmas postcards. The Finnish Post (Posti) hires annually 3 000 seasonal helpers just to sort the Christmas cards.

Finns also send around 1,6 million Easter cards and they claim that this tradition is slowly vanishing. Maybe so, but really slowly. :) My family sends 36 Christmas cards and 10 Easter cards annually.

First Finnish postcards were made in the late 19th century. Finland got own stamp in year 1856, which was something really historical as Finland at that time was not independent but part of Russia as Grand Duchy of Finland. The Finland enjoyed quite high degree autonomy and the stamps were granted to Finland by Emperor/Tsar of Russia and Grand Prince of Finland Alexander II (Aleksanteri II). In 1890 post manifest was published. It was part of Russian regime's plan to narrow Finland’s autonomy. So after that for almost 30 years all the post in Finland had Russian stamps until 1917.

Nowadays the postcards can be send either in 1st or 2nd class. There is also special price for Christmas cards, if one sends the cards before certain date. Most of the stamps are for 1st or 2nd class. They are also called as forever stamps. At the moment the 1st class’ value is 1,10 euros. With that stamp one can send postcard in Finland or all over the world.

Finnish stamps now available you find from here

  and stamps ever printed in Finland from here.

If you are interested in statistics, more Finland in Figures you find from here.