Advent
How did the Advent calendar and the Advent star come about? When do people start putting up Christmas decorations? The celebration of festivals and folk traditions amongst the people of the Nordic societies is one of Nordiska museet’s areas of expertise. Here you can find out more about Advent based on the museum’s collections and expertise.
The origins and meaning of Advent
Advent is a Christian season celebrated during the four Sundays before Christmas Eve and marks the beginning of the Christian church year. The word Advent comes from the Latin word for “arrival” and refers to the coming of Jesus Christ.
For many people today, Advent marks the beginning of Christmas preparations, with Advent stars, candle holders, Christmas baking, mulled wine and Advent calendars for children. However, Christmas celebrations and decorations have changed over time. Just over a hundred years ago, Christmas shop displays usually began only on the Sunday before Christmas Eve.
In early Christian Sweden and the Nordic countries, Advent was a period of fasting, a way of physically marking the joyful arrival of the Lord. During the fast, people ate more sparingly, especially avoiding meat. In the farming society, Advent was known as the Christmas fast, julfasta, when preparations for Christmas food began. Those who could afford it slaughtered the Christmas pig at the beginning of December.
A reminder of the Christmas fast is lutfisk (dried cod prepared with lye), which was traditionally soaked on St Anna’s Day on 9 December. Advent was also a time of stillness and reverence, when weddings were forbidden and noisy work was to be avoided.
Advent traditions and decorations
Both the Advent candle holder and the Advent star have German origins and became common in Sweden during the 1930s. The Advent star was created in the German town of Herrnhut in the 1880s and became popular in Sweden during the 1930s and 1940s.
Students and teachers in a school in Herrnhut created paper stars illuminated from within. One possible inspiration was the Swedish tradition of stjärngossar, carrying stars in processions. When German businesses began producing the stars, they were mass-produced in foldable forms and later became electrified.
The first Swedish written record of the term adventsstjärna dates from 1923, and sales began a few years later. The star is said to symbolise the Star of Bethlehem, which guided the three wise men to the stable where the newborn Jesus lay in the manger. Today, the Advent star remains an important Christmas symbol.
The Advent calendar
The first Advent calendar was printed in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. In the late 19th century, a young boy named Gerhard Lang lived in Germany. His longing for Christmas was so strong that his mother baked twenty-four biscuits and placed them on a piece of colourful cardboard. Each day until Christmas, Gerhard was allowed to eat one biscuit.
As an adult, he transformed his mother’s biscuit calendar into a printed paper calendar with two sheets and 24 Christmas images. The success was unexpectedly great, and in the 1920s a new version was created with doors to open and an image behind each one. Lang’s calendar became popular and eventually reached Sweden.
What do people in Nordics celebrate, and how?
As a museum of cultural history, Nordiska museet documents everyday life and festive occasions in the Nordic region. For example, we research: What do people celebrate, and how? What do the traditions and rituals of yesterday and today look like? And what role do they play in our social life?
We have been gathering knowledge about traditions since the late 19th century
Since the late 19th century, we have been documenting and gathering knowledge about traditions and rituals in people’s everyday lives and celebrations, which represent festivals and traditions. This knowledge takes the form of artefacts, photographs, folk memories and transcribed interviews featuring examples of rituals and traditions.
We have also collected and documented this material through fieldwork (that is, documenting celebrations on site), sending out questionnaires, interviewing people and, more recently, through digital collections.
Traditions change and are dynamic
Over the 150 years that the collections have been in existence, there have been enormous social changes in Sweden and the Nordic region. Traditions and social patterns are also dynamic and change: traditions are born, transformed and evolve in line with people, the times and the media. We continuously analyse the material in the light of both contemporary processes and historical circumstances.
Many factors shape and change celebrations
In short, it can be said that celebrations today reflect a multitude of influences from past social structures, from our own time, from migration, as well as social, economic and technological change.
Festivals and festive celebrations in the Nordic region are strongly influenced by the Christian faith, changes in society and values. Further factors include folk and supernatural- beliefs, folk religion and folk values that can be traced back to Nordic peasant society.
Over the 150 years that Nordiska museet has been gathering knowledge about traditions and rituals linked to festivals and special days of the year, there have been enormous social changes in Sweden and the Nordic region. Traditions are born, transformed and evolved in tandem with time and it’s people.
Ritual?
Over the past 150 years, research perspectives and concepts have also changed. A key fundamental concept is that of ritual. This refers to the practical observance – what people do in connection with a festival, tradition, specific day, time of year or event. Such as eating semlor, hiding Easter eggs, lighting candles in cemeteries or going ‘trick-or-treating’.
Rituals often involve symbols, such as the Christmas tree, the Midsummer maypole, waffles and semlor, or, for that matter, the crisps and dip enjoyed during Friday nights for the ultimate “fredagsmys”.
Tradition?
You could say that a ritual becomes a tradition when people attach particular value to the ritual and the celebration, without these necessarily having to be particularly old or widespread.
This definition, too, reflects the perspective of academic research. However, in everyday speech, the terms ‘ritual’, ‘tradition’, ‘festival’ and ‘custom’ are often used interchangeably. When we talk about traditions here, we are generally referring to rituals that are particularly valued; Christmas celebrations are one example.
Religious festivals
Another important term is ‘festival’ (högtid), which refers to rituals that are more closely linked to religious calendars. In the Nordic countries, the Christian calendar has dominated, but other religious calendars play an important role as well.
The boundary between religious calendar rituals and secular rituals appears to be becoming increasingly blurred, reflecting the secularisation of society. Most people in Sweden celebrate religious festivals without paying attention to their religious connection.
Annual festivals and life-cycle celebrations
In addition to the church calendar, festivals have historically been shaped by the rhythm of the farming year and agriculture. These are known as annual festivals or calendar rites.
Many festivals are linked to the human life cycle, where church rites have been, and remain, of great significance.
However, as society changes, so does the significance of these rituals. Although many people are still baptised today, it is not uncommon for this to take place through non-church naming ceremonies.
Ever-changing and dynamic
One of the most important insights into rituals and traditions to emerge from research is that they change. Certain particularly transformative social changes have left a clear mark on both everyday life and on rituals and festivals.
Perhaps the most significant from a cultural-historical perspective are the role of the church, as well as urbanisation, democratisation, the welfare state and the pursuit of social justice.
Contemporary life and tradition
As the Nordic countries became increasingly urbanised, economic conditions changed. People were no longer producing goods simply to provide for themselves. The family was transformed into a unit of consumption, able to purchase all the goods marketed in connection with festive occasions.
Traditions and festivals follow people’s movements between communities. Some are upheld, others fade away, and some take on a different meaning.
