(no subject)
So I wasn't completely wrong, after all, about not seeing any flowers before this month. I did spot a bunch of buds (some of them at the corner of our own house) but never did I manage to catch any of them opening. And now there's snow in the forecast so the flowers may let me wait for a while yet.
Finland has this weird newish custom about dressing kids up as witches or cats for Palm Sunday, and they wander around the neighbourhood in a somewhat trick-or-treat like manner. They have willow twigs with (preferably) plenty of catkins and all kinds of colourful decorations (feathers, ribbons...), and when someone opens their door each of them waves one twig and chants this rhyme that's supposed to bring blessing for the following year. If you give them sweets or some other treat you get to keep the waved twigs. The twigs are traditionally collected and decorated by the kids themselves, although it's not too uncommon to have their mothers helping. And just to prove this isn't an April Fool's joke (now there's a custom I've never appreciated), here's a picture.
Wikipedia tells me the willow twig part comes from Eastern Finland's Orthodox Christians, who used to do the whole thing without the dress-up part (and was limited to relatives and family members, and the twigs had been blessed in a church on the day before, and the treat was only received the next Saturday) in the memory of Jesus and palm leaf greetings. The article doesn't mention it, so I don't know if the twigs were decorated or not. It also has a touch of old pagan belief that willow has magic powers, and old Finno-Ugric custom of waving twigs to drive away evil spirits.
The dress-up part, on the other hand, still according to Wikipedia, comes from the Western Finland, where Good Friday and that Saturday (does it have a name in English? My dictionary doesn't know it if it does) was thought to be a time when Christian God's protecting influence was at its weakest, and witches (or 'trulls') had a free reign. A trull was a malicious being (or someone pretending to be one) who had bad things in mind especially towards domestic animals. On those two days women who had estranged from society circled around as trulls cutting fur and pieces of skin from animals (I do hope the skin wasn't attached to the animals at the time, but I can't say I remember that much about old customs) to demonstrate their envy towards their neigbours.
So we have trulls who are connected to curses, and willow twigs used to bless, and we put them together because kids like dress-up and waving colourful things. Neighbours, however distant, are a natural inclusion to the custom, because the more doors to knock the better are the chances to get more sweets. I remember going a few times when I was a kid, and it was fun. Lots of sweets were had, and we couldn't have cared less about any religious (Christian or pagan) implications.
My mother used to by sweets for the Palm Sunday, and was always ready to deal them out, but I'm afraid we are boring and hermit-like and prefer to sleep until midday, so we just remove the battery from our door bell to keep from being woken up by the little witches. My darling is allergic to the catkins, so we couldn't take any inside to start with, and there's plenty of other houses to visit so I can't even bring myself to feel bad about disappointing the kids. Besides, back when I was doing the circling, I liked unresponsive doors better than a 'sorry, forgot to buy any sweets' - which is the only other possible response because I sure don't ever remember the whole thing before I see my darling taking off the battery again :P You can't really give the kids treats that are unwrapped, and the only wrapped things we have right now don't have Finnish ingredient lists so I couldn't possibly give them out to kids who might be allergic to something in them (that sort of things are never mentioned on the door, they are sorted out later when you go through your loot).
And even though I just finished saying I don't like April Fool's jokes, this one was rather amusing :)
Finland has this weird newish custom about dressing kids up as witches or cats for Palm Sunday, and they wander around the neighbourhood in a somewhat trick-or-treat like manner. They have willow twigs with (preferably) plenty of catkins and all kinds of colourful decorations (feathers, ribbons...), and when someone opens their door each of them waves one twig and chants this rhyme that's supposed to bring blessing for the following year. If you give them sweets or some other treat you get to keep the waved twigs. The twigs are traditionally collected and decorated by the kids themselves, although it's not too uncommon to have their mothers helping. And just to prove this isn't an April Fool's joke (now there's a custom I've never appreciated), here's a picture.
Wikipedia tells me the willow twig part comes from Eastern Finland's Orthodox Christians, who used to do the whole thing without the dress-up part (and was limited to relatives and family members, and the twigs had been blessed in a church on the day before, and the treat was only received the next Saturday) in the memory of Jesus and palm leaf greetings. The article doesn't mention it, so I don't know if the twigs were decorated or not. It also has a touch of old pagan belief that willow has magic powers, and old Finno-Ugric custom of waving twigs to drive away evil spirits.
The dress-up part, on the other hand, still according to Wikipedia, comes from the Western Finland, where Good Friday and that Saturday (does it have a name in English? My dictionary doesn't know it if it does) was thought to be a time when Christian God's protecting influence was at its weakest, and witches (or 'trulls') had a free reign. A trull was a malicious being (or someone pretending to be one) who had bad things in mind especially towards domestic animals. On those two days women who had estranged from society circled around as trulls cutting fur and pieces of skin from animals (I do hope the skin wasn't attached to the animals at the time, but I can't say I remember that much about old customs) to demonstrate their envy towards their neigbours.
So we have trulls who are connected to curses, and willow twigs used to bless, and we put them together because kids like dress-up and waving colourful things. Neighbours, however distant, are a natural inclusion to the custom, because the more doors to knock the better are the chances to get more sweets. I remember going a few times when I was a kid, and it was fun. Lots of sweets were had, and we couldn't have cared less about any religious (Christian or pagan) implications.
My mother used to by sweets for the Palm Sunday, and was always ready to deal them out, but I'm afraid we are boring and hermit-like and prefer to sleep until midday, so we just remove the battery from our door bell to keep from being woken up by the little witches. My darling is allergic to the catkins, so we couldn't take any inside to start with, and there's plenty of other houses to visit so I can't even bring myself to feel bad about disappointing the kids. Besides, back when I was doing the circling, I liked unresponsive doors better than a 'sorry, forgot to buy any sweets' - which is the only other possible response because I sure don't ever remember the whole thing before I see my darling taking off the battery again :P You can't really give the kids treats that are unwrapped, and the only wrapped things we have right now don't have Finnish ingredient lists so I couldn't possibly give them out to kids who might be allergic to something in them (that sort of things are never mentioned on the door, they are sorted out later when you go through your loot).
And even though I just finished saying I don't like April Fool's jokes, this one was rather amusing :)