Category Archives: St. Knut’s Day

Jan 13 2025
1 Comment
Christmas, Copperman's Day, Plough Monday, St. Knut's Day

Plunder the Tree!

In Sweden, the twentieth day after Christmas is a significant one: January 13 brings St. Knut’s Day, and for Swedes, this is the day to toss out the Christmas tree. First, it must be plundered: if there are cookies and foil wrapped chocolate ornaments still on the tree, this is the day they get gobbled up! Gingerbread houses get smashed and eaten! Every last candy cane is consumed! It is a proper and festive end to the Yuletide season.

The Swedes, who like to sing and dance around their trees when Christmas Eve comes (have you seen the 1982 Ingmar Bergman film Fanny and Alexander?) will be singing and dancing around their trees again today before the tree is plundered and tossed. The tossing, traditionally, was out the window, though these days that practice is frowned upon; it’s more common nowadays for clubs and civic organizations to collect the discarded trees. They stow them away for Walpurgis Night bonfires at the end of April. All of these things––the dancing, the singing, the bonfires––suggest to me that Sweden is a pretty decent place to live. Plus, how nice to have a proper and widely acknowledged Close to Christmas day? Here in the States, where it’s not unusual to see a tree tossed sadly on the curbside as early as the 26th of December, I’d say we could use a bit of guidance like this (not to mention a bit of celebration, too, to close the season).

This year, the 13th of January also brings Plough Monday and Copperman’s Day. Both of these obscure holidays fall each year on the Monday after Epiphany, and here we are today at that Monday. Copperman’s Day is the more obscure of the two: It is an old Dutch printer’s holiday, and on this day, the print apprentices would get the day off to do what they wished in the print shop. The resulting prints they made, of their own design and creation, they’d sell for a copper. Plough Monday relates to St. Distaff’s Day, which was last week, on the day after Epiphany. St. Distaff brings the traditional Back to Work day for the women (back to their spinning), while Plough Monday brings the traditional Back to Work Day for the men (back to the plough).

As for us in this house, we’ll be ignoring these things, for the most part. Our tree, which is still lovely and thirsty and thriving and beautiful, will remain standing in the living room, where we intend to keep it, along with all the other Christmas greenery, until Candlemas Eve on the First of February. This is a tradition just as old, I imagine, or perhaps even older than the St. Knut’s tradition in Sweden. And we’ve been back to work since last week (employers these days don’t want us taking off all the days ’til Plough Monday). And whilst I do make a Copperman’s Day print each year, it’s a rare event indeed when it actually is done on Copperman’s Day. If I get to organize my print shop tonight and set some type, that alone will be a miraculous thing. Expect the newest Convivio Bookworks Copperman’s Day print by early February (if all goes well).

However, I can tell you what we do plan on for tonight: an illuminated Christmas tree, and delightful Swedish Christmas music in the house on this long winter’s night. The songs (like “Nu är det Jul Igen,” a 500-year old Dancing Around the Tree song whose lyrics essentially translate to Now it is Christmas again and it will be Christmas until Easter –– no, that isn’t true, for in between comes Lent) are full of wonder and joy, which is perhaps not what one would expect from a land so dark and cold at this time of year. Or perhaps it is just what you’d expect. I can’t say. All I know is we intend to make it a fun night here in our home, and I encourage you to do the same.

 

Today’s chapter of the Convivio Book of Days comes to us thanks to the suggestion of Convivio friend Rachel Kopel in San Diego. We spend most Friday afternoons together on Real Mail Fridays, the letter writing social I host on Zoom most Fridays for the Jaffe Center for Book Arts. Rachel joins us, leaves sometimes for ukulele practice, then joins us again before the social is done. We’d love to have you join us, too. We meet the most interesting people at Real Mail Fridays!

Image: A Swedish penny postcard for Christmas, printed in the early 1900s. The artist is Jenny Nyström. The characters in the truck are called Tomten: Swedish elves who live in barns. God Jul (Happy Christmas).

 

Jan 13 2024
Christmas, St. Knut's Day, Yule

Plunder the Tree! It’s St. Knut’s Day

In Sweden, the Christmas season began last month with Sankta Lucia’s Day on the 13th of December, and now, one month later, on this 13th of January, comes St. Knut’s Day: it is the day there when Christmas ends. And it ends with a plundering: All the cookies and candies that decorated the tree get eaten up! The Swedes like to dance around their Christmas trees with simple arm-linked rounds and skips, and this, too, will happen today, as it did on Christmas Eve… and then, finally, the tree is taken down (and sometimes tossed out the window).

I love things like this… and this, no doubt, is because I am a follower of rules. I stop at every stop sign I encounter on the road, I do every single push-up and jumping jack I’m told to do by my trainer, I do not cut corners. In Sweden, we know: Christmas begins now! (Sankta Lucia says so.) Christmas now is done! (Sankt Knut says so.) Organized rules! How grand is that?

Here in the States, we have no clear rules for these things. There was a time not all that long ago––in my grandparents’ day, when my mom was a kid––when folks got their Christmas trees on or near Christmas Eve and it was considered bad luck to remove Christmas decorations before Epiphany. But no one cares about luck these days and the rules have all been tossed out the window (along with the tree, perhaps). And though outwardly I am not a terribly organized person––my boss stepped into my office doorway earlier this week and, with widened eyes, said, “Whoa, I thought my office was messy”)––I do, in fact, love order. As Björk sings in one of her songs (a song called “Hunter”): I thought I could organize freedom. How Scandinavian of me. I like knowing the rules and that’s probably my incentive in writing this Book of Days. I like knowing what’s expected of me each day.

And so while we here in the States never know, once Christmas Day has passed, when we might see a Christmas tree tossed curbside, it seems that in Sweden everyone knows that the tree comes down on St. Knut’s Day, for it, apparently, has always been thus. And how wonderful, too, that it’s done in a celebratory way: plundering the tree, smashing the gingerbread houses, gobbling up every last cookie and cake, and dancing rounds ’round the tree to songs with lines like Tjugondag Knut dansas julen ut och då plundras och kasseras granen!: “The 20th of Knut dances Christmas away and then the tree is plundered and thrown away!”

So we are, according to the Swedes, at the 20th Day of Christmas. Just enough days to count on all our fingers and toes. And certainly now a bit of clarity from this rule-follower is in order: Several weeks ago I told you there are two ways of counting the Twelve Days of Christmas and that the version I like best holds six days in the old year and six days in the new. I stand by that system, for I love the symmetry as Christmastide spans the ages. It is mostly churches that count the days differently, with the First Day of Christmas being Christmas Day (giving us seven days in the old year and five in the new)… and this is how the Swedes reckon things, too. For Sinkt Knut’s Day is widely known as Tjugondag and that word Tjugondag means “twentieth day.”

Aside from the plundering and the dancing, there are some regions of Sweden where folks would open their doors to all the neighbors in an effort to rid the home of all leftover Christmas treats… and once that was accomplished, the woman of the house would, armed with her broom but all in good fun, run through the house, sweeping under sofas, tables, and chairs, and then shooing all the guests out with blows of her broom, shouting, “Out Knut! Now Christmas is over!”

Here’s another end-to-Christmas song for dancing ’round the tree and smashing the gingerbread houses on this Tjugondag; it’s called “Nu är Glada Julen Slut, Slut, Slut”:

Snart är glada julen slut, slut, slut.
Julegranen bäres ut, ut, ut.
Men till nästa år igen
kommer han vår gamle vän,
ty det har han lovat.

Or, in English:

Soon merry Christmas is over, over, over.
The Christmas tree is carried out, out, out.
But until next year again
comes he our old friend,
for he has promised.

And good old Father Christmas does promise just this. I love the directness of Swedish Christmas songs. The most famous of them is the song that’s in the image at the top of this post: “Nu är det Jul Igen”. But that’s for the start of Christmas, at Christmas Eve, when folks first dance around the tree. It’s a centuries-old nonsense song whose lyric translates to, Now it is Christmas again and it will be Christmas until Easter. No! That isn’t true, for in between comes Lent. And so it does. Lent will come, Easter will come, Midsommar will come and the sun will never set, and then it will be harvest time and it will grow dark and Sankta Lucia will come and then it will be Christmas again.

Our image for today is from a print I purchased two Christmases ago at our local Swedish Julmarknad, or Christmas Market, which comes each November or December (depending on the year) at the First United Methodist Church in Boca Raton, Florida. Convivio Bookworks has a pop-up shop at the Julmarknad each year. It’s always a delightful afternoon!

Did you know we sell some truly delightful Scandinavian specialty foods at our shop? Just last weekend, my sister made homemade riskrem, the wonderful traditional Norwegian rice pudding. To make it, she cooked our Scandinavian Porridge Rice in milk, then added freshly whipped cream, and served it with our Wild Swedish Lingonberries and Vanilla Powdered Sugar. I added cinnamon and cardamom to the leftover riskrem with some additional vanilla powdered sugar and it was truly sublime. Oh, I wish I had more right now! Our Löfbergs Coffee from Sweden is also so good. It’s our favorite coffee in this house. I like the medium roast, but there is also a dark roast. Each bag contains over a pound of ground coffee.