A Very Finnish Christmas

I just came back from my first visit to Finland after officially moving back to the States. The trip was important for many personal reasons (I miss Finland, I miss hearing Finnish, I miss Fazer chocolates, you get the idea) but the most important reason for going back was to finally experience a Finnish Christmas.

Aurajoki on a crisp sunny day

I have my boyfriend’s mother and sister to thank for giving me that experience. They planned the day down to a T and, while it was very different from what I had expected, it was still wonderful experiencing a holiday that has had little meaning for my own family through the eyes of a family who cares deeply about it.

First, let me say what I was expecting. Holidays in India are a chance for families to all come together. Unlike people in the US, for whom families coming together is associated with a great deal of stress and angst, for Indians the family together means a happy state of constant happy chaos, eating and usually some religious activities. So I, despite everything I know about Finnish culture being the mostly the opposite of Indian culture, was imagining a day with the entire family together being in a house swarming with activity.

The activity part was right, but this was more due to my boyfriend’s mother’s love for days full of continuous, though highly organized, action. But the large family with lots of chaos clearly not part of the plan. Especially the chaos.

We walked into her house to find riisipuuro (rice porridge, similar to kheer minus the sugar for all of you Indians reading this) cooking on the stove. We had only a little bit of catch up time before we sat to watch the Christmas Peace being read at the center of Turku less than ten kilometers away. Watching the crowd bundled up in the freezing cold while standing in the Old Town Square, I was not at all jealous of not being there in person.

The rest of the day was spent making Christmas baked goods (joulutorttu and pipparkakku) and listening to a Christmas service in the church in my boyfriend’s home town. We also visited his grandparents’ graves to light candles.

The feeling I had for most of the day was one of extreme calm and peace, perhaps a tone set by the Christmas Peace (though, again, I couldn’t understand any of it). This is despite the fact that this was the sight that greeted us when we walked into my boyfriend’s mother’s house.

There was a pile of presents for all of us and yet we didn’t think about them until the end of the day, once dinner had been cleared away. This meant that the focus of the day was on actually being together and for reflection through the church service, our visit to the grave and the Christmas Peace.

And I was left mostly with a feeling of gratitude because my boyfriend’s mother and sister planned a special surprise for my first Finnish Christmas. A visit from a joulupukki (a tradition that I described in this post) who was perhaps surprised that there were no children in this house but played the part with dedication anyway (My boyfriend's mother meanwhile played the part of pretending he was actually Santa and engaging with him in conversation as though he were). I was laughing the entire time, especially when he “gave” each of us presents that my boyfriend’s sister had quickly grabbed from under the tree when she ducked outside to let him in.

My boyfriend’s family asked what traditions my family has for Christmas and I answered that we really didn’t beyond putting up a tree, leaving our Diwali lights up that were hung in October and giving each other presents. My distinct memory of Christmas was the excitement of wondering what would be under the tree, not for the presents themselves but because my parents (my father probably) would put surprises for us, such as wrapping tissue boxes to put under the tree and hiding our real presents elsewhere or writing a letter from “Santa” that had my father’s distinct brand of humor all over it. Without treasured traditions for the holiday, my parents were free to make the holiday mean whatever they wanted it to mean. Eventually the holiday lost all meaning for us and our celebration was limited to putting up the tree and perhaps having a fancier dinner than usual.

And so it was nice to celebrate the holiday with a family for whom there are treasured memories associated with the day. And I felt very privileged to be part of it. But part of me missed the chaotic atmosphere of a large family cooking, eating and being together. I will just have to visit India for that.