Christmas tree - Joulukuusi

It is tradition in Finland to have a christmas tree. Usually the tree is a spruce. It can be logged from own forest or bought from a retailer. Some prefer an artificial christmas tree. Some decorate the tree already on first advent, but most popular tradition is to decorate the tree on 21st of December (Tuomaan päivä) and have it until 6th of January (Loppiainen) or 13th of January (Nuutin päivä).

The first christmas trees were seen in Finland in the early 1800s, but they became popular among the citizen in the early 1900s. Quite big role in this was played by the teachers of primary school. Academy that trained Finnish school teachers was founded in Jyväskylä in 1863. They started to celebrate the end of the autumn semester by bringing in a spruce to the ball room and decorating it with self made decoration. The graduated teachers spread the custom to celebrate the end of autumn semester with a christmas tree together with plays by the students and songs throughout Finland.

For decades the trees were decorated with some candles, straw decoration, candies, chains with flags and gingerbreads. Nowadays quite many trees have led-lights, colorful balls and all kinds of glitter. Many Finns also have some christmas tree decoration, that have been inherited or have some other sentimental value.

My family has an artificial christmas tree, a Canadian pine tree says its storage box, and I bought it as my first Christmas tree in the late 1990s. Along the years it has gotten decoration from United States, Hungary, Germany and of cource from Finland. Some of the decoration mean a lot to me and my family, others will be renewed in 5 or 10 years intervals.

We will set up our tree on 21st of December, so why to blog about the tree today? 

Today Finland’s most welknown christmas tree was logged and transported to its place in the front of the cathedral of Turku. This year’s tree comes from Nousiainen, which is located about 20 km north from Turku. The tree is 22 meters tall and weighs about 4 tons. It is about 65 years old and will decorate Turku until the 13th of January 2017. After this tree is usually cut to pieces and given back to the donator. One year tree was used to renew the mast of local sailing ship, Sigyn.

The tree will have 717 led lights and they will be litten on the 26th of November. This tradition dates back over 100 years. First time the christmas tree in front of the Turku Cathedral had electrical lighting was in 1900. Electrical lighting became a tradition as early as in the 1930s. Every year people can offer spruce from their property to be the christmas tree in Turku and similar donations are also happening in other cities in Finland. In Turku the tree has to be 20-25 meters tall, equally formed, have nice green color and be bushy.

From here you find pics and video of this year’s tree and its journey to Turku.

I wish you all a nice 1st advent and December.

A right to vote

Today, on the 20th of July, we celebrate the 110th anniversary of Finnish women’s right to vote.

In the beginning of the 20th century Finland was part of Russia, the Grand Duchy of Finland. Russia’s quite poor success in Russo-Japanese War in 1904-1905 triggered unrest in the empire and also led to a general strike in Finland in 1905. Tsar Nicholas II, also the Grand Duke Nicholas II (Nikolai II) was forced to consent in some reforms in the empire. In Finland among others this meant broadening the right to vote. The working class demanded changes to the political rights during the general strike.

The Diet of Finland (säätyvaltiopäivät), last ones in the line of history dating back to the 14th century and Swedish regime, approved the new form of parliament and election law on 1.6.1906. This reform gave all men and women, above 24 years of age, the right to vote and to stand for election. The new parliament would be unicameral with 200 members, which would be elected by vote. On the 20.7.1906 the Tsar enact the law.

The Finnish women were the first in Europe and 3rd in the world to get the right to vote. They were the first women in the world to be granted the right to stand for election. First new parliament was elected in March 1907. 19 women were elected to the new parliament.

The general and equal right to vote changed the amount of people having the the right to vote from 126 000 persons to almost 1 273 000 persons, because also quite many men were without the right to vote before the renewal, f. ex. men, who did not own a property.

Today the parliament is still unicameral, the election is held every 4 years and at the moment (after 2015 election, total voter turnout being 66,9 % and in Finland 70,1 % with 4,46 million citizens having the right to vote) there are 83 women in the Finnish parliament (41,5 % of all representatives). In the European Parliament Finland has 13 member positions of which 8 is held by a Finnish woman (61,5 %).

The statistic of last parliament election can be found here.

Finnish Lion

By Vzb83, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=560472

The Finnish ice hockey team just brought us medal from Moscow from the IIHF ice hockey WM. Yes, it is silver and we lost to Canada, so we Finns did not celebrate it as much as we would have celebrated gold. But hey, there are almost 5,5 million inhabitants in Finland and a bit over 35 million in Canada. The WM gold we have won twice, first time in 1995 and second in 2011. Canada has won gold 26 times. From the WMs we have also 8 silver medals and 3 bronze medals. Canada has 11 silver medals and 7 bronze medals.

But this post is not about our success - or Canada’s - in ice hockey, it is about the name of the team. The Finns have called the national men’s ice hockey team Lions (Leijonat) so long I can remember, which of course is only about 35 - 40 years. Watching the games played in Saint Petersburg and in Moscow I got curious about our team’s name. How long have they played with our coat of arms’ lion on their jerseys? Is this a genuine tradition?

The team played for the first time with the lion that appears in the coat of arms of Finland on their jerseys in the 1948 against Czechoslovakia. Leijonat was born. The ice hockey team had played its first international match already in 1928 and lost to Sweden, but back then jersey didn’t have the lion on it.

But why then lion in the coat of arms of Finland? Finland is situated in the northern parts of Europe and the polar circle crosses our country. In these latitudes we only see lions in the zoo. Yet we still have it on our coat of arms.

The reason why we have it there is still pure speculation. But first time it was officially seen marking Finland in the 1580s on the burial monument of Swedish king Gustav Vasa, when the monument was revealed in the Uppsala cathedral in Sweden. After that the kings and queens of Sweden used it to describe Finland as part of Sweden until 1809, when Finland became a grand duchy of the Russian Empire. Even during the Russian regime Finland was referred to with this emblem and the new nation took it as her national arms in 1917, when declaring her independence. 

It is thought that lion comes from the ancient kings of Sweden. Those, who belonged to the Folkunga family. One of the members of that family, Valdemar Magnusson, was a duke of Finland in the beginning of 1300s and he used the first version of the Finnish lion in his coat of arms. We also should remember that the first demarcation between Sweden and Russia (or Novgorod), being also the first time to identify Finland’s eastern borderline, was drawn in the peace of Pähkinäsaari in 1323. But why a lion? Why not a bear or a wolf to describe the eastern parts of Sweden back then?

Lion is an animal used in heraldry since ancient times. It has been a mark of power and very much used in the coat of arms of nobels during medieval times and even before. That would explain the Folkunga family part. The sculptor or maker of Gustav Vasa’s monument was Willem Boy. He was from Flander in Belgium and Flander’s emblem is also lion.

I think we will never find out the actual reason to use lion to describe Finland. I personally suspect that it comes from many different occasions. Still it has been used as the symbol of Finland for centuries. We can be proud of it and also of our ice hockey team, Leijonat!

http://leijonat.fi/

By MiRoWaLTTeRi - I made this picture from scratch using Adobe Photoshop.Previously published: http://s1272.beta.photobucket.com/user/MiRoWaLTTeRi/media/Finland-National-Ice-Hockey-Team-Jersey.png.html, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22965224

Winter vacation / Hiihtoloma

When I’m writing this, on week 8, the school children of Southern parts of Finland have a winter vacation (talviloma). School children in central parts have their vacation on week 9 and children in northern parts on week 10.

Nowadays quite many people travel also abroad to sun and warmth during this vacation, but still major part of the population having winter vacation spend it downhill skiing, cross-country skiing, skating and in other winter activities. That is why the vacation is spend during three weeks in Finland. Otherwise the skiing resorts, especially in the notrhern parts of Finland, would be totally crowded. Even with this system the week 8 and 9 are fully booked in those resorts. Place in the car-train taking cars and passengers up north has to be booked almost a year before.

Winter vacation is also called skiing vacation (hiihtoloma) in Finland. The school children in Finland have had this vacation officially since 1933, when the administration of schooling accepted it as part of syllabus.

The idea was introduced already in 1926 by a teacher Santeri Hirvonen from Kouvola. He wrote in magazine, that the Finnish school children should have one week skiing vacation, because when skiing the children would get fresh air and endurance for the rest of the school year. The idea was taken forward by Lauri Pihkala, who we Finnish also know as the “father” of pesäpallo. Pesäpallo is the Finnish version of baseball and was depeloped by Pihkala in 1920s from so called kingball, played already in Finland, by bringing to it elements from the American baseball. Pesäpallo is Finland’s national game.

But back to this winter vacation. The working-age population in Finland also have right to winter vacation. The annual vacation amount for employed people in Finland is 30 days, from which 24 days has to be held in the summertime (between 1.5. - 30.9.) and the rest 6 days the worker can then have outside the summertime. People with school children often take their 6 days then during the school’s winter vacation. The normal Saturdays are also counted to the vacation days, although we follow a 5 days’ work week in Finland, hence the one week vacation is 6 days.

The Finnish children have compulsory education from the year they turn 7 to age of 17, or when they graduate from the comprehensive school (takes 9 years, so usually in the year the child turns 16). The school year in Finland starts in the mid of August and ends on week 22 (a Saturday between 29.5 - 5.6.). Additionally the children in elementary school have a right to at least 10 days of Christmas vacation (starting usually few days before Christmas and ending just after Epiphany), autumn vacation (few days or a week in October, the local municipality can determine the length) and one week skiing vacation.

A short post this time, because I’m in a hurry to go out and enjoy the fresh snow and vacation. :)