Emma and I just returned from spending Christmas up north in Älandsbro, visiting her parents and spending time with several other family members. The trip there wasn't easy. There has been an uncharacteristically large amount of snow already this winter, and trains were very delayed. We waited four hours for our train to leave Stockholm the day before Christmas eve. Many others were also delayed. The central station in Stockholm was packed.

Once we did arrive, I got to experience -30° C weather for my first time. I got to experience -20 last year, but -30 is a whole new world of cold. We walked to buy a few groceries on Christmas eve, and after just a couple of minutes in the cold we both had frost in our eyelashes, frost on our scarves where our breath came through, and Emma had very frosty dreads.

Anyway, Christmas got me thinking again about all the food traditions in Sweden, because Christmas may have the most special food of any time of year here. It starts with gingerbread cookies, like we usually have in the US, and a saffron bun called a Lussekatt and homemade caramels called knäck, which we don't. There is also lots of glögg, mulled wine often served with almonds and raisins, to drink throughout December as well. Next is Julmust, a type of soda which is kind of like cola but has hops and other things added to give it a unique flavour. Near Christmas time Coca-cola loses a lot of sales because many people switch to Julmust.

Julmust isn't a Christmas specific food though, because at Easter there is an identical drink called Påskmust. The only difference is they put a different label on the bottle. Another sweet Christmas treat is a rice pudding porridge. This one comes with a tradition where an almond is placed in the pot of porridge, and if a young lady ends up with this almond in her bowl of porridge, it means she will get married within the next year. I don't know what happens if the almond is found by a man, or a woman who is already married, or a young child. Hmm.

Then is the real feast, the buffet called a julbord. This is the dinner on Christmas eve, but also one may partake in another julbord before Christmas. It seems that instead of having an office holiday party, most companies reserve a julbord at a restaurant for everyone to stuff themselves at before they all head off for the holiday (and additional excessive eating).

Some of the foods generally found on the julbord and pictured above include a delicious mustard covered ham, tiny sausages called prinskorv, meatballs, Janssons frestelse (a casserole with potatoes and anchovies), beet salad, and lutefisk. Additionally there is usually pickled herring with various kinds of sauces, gravad lax (raw salmon cured with salt and dill), potatoes, various kinds of breads and cheeses, cabbage salads, and more. Many of these foods aren't at all specific to Christmas, but they all seem to come to the table together this time of year.

I contributed a couple of American touches to all the Swedish Christmas foods this year. I made a pumpkin pie, which was quite popular, and some eggnog. I think the eggnog was not quite as popular, which is unsurprising, but it seemed like Emma liked it.

There are more interesting traditions about food in Sweden that I've learned about over the last couple of years. For example, there's a bit of a tradition of eating pea soup and pancakes on Thursdays that I think is these days most active in the military, although Emma and I sometimes try to follow suit for our own Thursday dinner. Then there is sju sorters kakor--seven types of cakes/cookies. The idea here is that whenever one has guests over, there should be seven types of cookies or cakes served with the coffee. Furthermore, I learned also that there should be at least one of each type of cookie for each guest, plus one extra so the cookie tray doesn't look sad after everyone's gathered their treats. Each guest then must take no more than one of each cookie type, at least for the first round.

Sara, Emma's mom, did indeed have seven types of cookies to choose from for our Christmas fika. I thankfully learned the rules beforehand and took only one of each type for my own plate.

One thing American and Swedish Christmases definitely have in common: a tremendous amount of food, much of it unhealthy, is eaten in large quantities. Yum.