Midsommar

Midsommar is a good time to start a blog about life in Sweden as it is the biggest holiday in Sweden and has no parallel in England. The closest thing would be a May Day celebration or a harvest festival. Both exist to celebrate summer and the renual of life and both include dancing around a pole and merry making with your friends and neighbours.

The big difference though is that the whole thing is taken much more seriously here in Sweden. It really does feel bigger than Christmas. People begin talking about midsommar weeks before the event and everybody keeps asking each other, 'What are you doing for midsommar?. It's a time for families to meet up and enjoy the long sunlit day and be thankful that the winter is a distant memory and soon the summer holidays start.

Of course this all sort of falls apart if you don't have a family or if your family is in another country. Even my wife's parents are out the country at this time of year so we really have nobody but ourselves to make merry with. In previous years this has put a real downer on the day and it became just like any other long weekend (except all the shops were shut). I felt very left out and lonely seeing everyone enjoying themselves and socialising, like it was just one giant party and I hadn't been invited.

Things only changed when my son was born as I felt it was my duty to make sure he never felt left out of Swedish life, so now we go to the local midsommar celebration every year and join in the singing and the dancing. I realised it was all just a state of mind and all I needed to do to feel I belonged was to sit back and enjoy the atmosphere of people coming together and sharing a common experience.

Still, when I woke up to feed my daughter at 3.00am this morning, the rain was pounding against the window, but I could still here drunken laughter coming from the neighbourhood and maybe I've got it all wrong and that's the real spirit of midsommar.