The old country

I'm a Swede by heritage. In fact, my mom recently gave me the framed copy of my Papa's birth certificate, all in Swedish. His parents homesteaded what we refer to as "The Homeplace" which, unfortunately, no longer is in the family. But that's a long and sad story for another day...

Anyway, via the Daily Coyote, (which was a great book, btw) the author posted a link to her grandmother's blog and it ROCKS. It has some about "the old country" and some about life today. I especially like the one about lying about her age! Here's a bit about one of the old traditions:

We had a yearly custom of having children going around the village singing songs and sticking a branch of a birch tree with tender new green leaves in the window. It was sort of like Halloween here. We would either get eggs or money. It was a fun time for we were professing that Spring was coming. My mother had never let us 'sing May'. She thought it was just begging. Tant Elin said Pooh. let them go. I will dress them all up in some of my finery.

Her finery was unbelievable. I was a princess in fabulous clothes and a tiara that to my eyes looked exactly like DIAMONDS. My brother was a sailor of some sort. We had a friend who played the accordion and all of us looked like a millon dollar. There were five or six of us. We began each holding a little basket but soon found we had to go home to get a bushel basket for we got so many eggs. And a lot of money too. It's an old old custom, to wish everyone happiness in the new season.

Go visit! Today!
Svensto