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June 21, 2005
The Swedish National Day Is Not June 6th
On this day, the longest day of the year, the sun rose at 3:31 am. The sun will set at 10:09 pm. And if Swedes weren't as addicted to three-day holidays as Americans, we'd be picking wildflowers for our hair and eating herring and singing drinking songs today. Instead, we'll do it on Friday, the official Midsommar Afton. And on Saturday my small family of three will get on an airplane and arrive in the U.S. in plenty of time for the flag-waving parades of the fourth of July.
This year the Swedish government removed one holiday from the calendar (the day after Easter) and added a new holiday on June 6th. That's the day in 1523 that Gusav Vasa became king. In 1916 Swedes began celebrating it as national flag day but it wasn't a stores-closed, everybody-go-home kind of deal. But then in 2004 the Justice Department got the dumb idea to make it a red-letter day and the politicians went along with it and the general populace went, "what? Are you serious?" But by then it was too late.
As an immigrant rapper/poet on a TV program noted last night, Midsommar is the true national day of Sweden, when everybody thanks their good luck for being Swedish and when it rains, as it often does, nobody goes inside but stays outside to celebrate nature and their good fortune in being Swedish. Midsommar is *the* holiday in Sweden. Christmas is swell, easter is fine but Midsommar is what makes you Swedish. It's the most inclusive holiday imaginable.
Last year I watched, just before the rain started, a large group of people of all ages dance around a Midsommar pole at a big public celebration. Some folks were wearing folk costumes. Most had on jeans. There were a few youngish punks with outrageous hair and aggressive tatoos. And they were all happy (me too) and holding hands as one does to dance around the pole in time to the live music provided by a small but hardy group of players. Outside of the politicians who voted for a national day and the marginal group of Neo-nazis who assemble every year on June 6th to march for white rights, virtually nobody in this country gives a shit when Gustav Vasa became king. Because Sweden already has a national day, no matter what the politicians decreed, and I'll be celebrating it on Friday with a bunch of herring, a box of strawberries and a few schnaps. Just like everybody else.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at June 21, 2005 04:15 PM