Imagine early morning before sunrise when all is dark. All of a sudden, there is a faint singing in the distance and the doorway is lit up by a woman in a long white gown, wearing a wreath with candles on her head. Lucia, her maidens, and the “star boys” follow and bring light, joyful singing, coffee and sweet saffron rolls.
Saffron Rolls (in a re-purposed Polarn O. Pyret hat)
Christmas and the advent weeks is when we feel the most homesick, but we are lucky to live in Chicago, where the Swedish community is big enough for my kids to participate in one of the many Lucia celebrations. Today, the Chicago Lucia will be at Daley Plaza at 11:30 and in Andersonville, the Swedish neighborhood, in the evening. (See the Swedish American Museum for event details.) We had the pleasure of seeing and hearing three Lucia processions a couple of weekends ago at the Swedish American Museum Christmas Market where we had a funflector booth. It was a joy to see my 10-year old twins as “tärna” (maid) and “stjärngosse” (star boy) and my 13-year-old as Lucia with all their friends from Swedish School. It felt like being back in Sweden with the right music, food and ambiance – and parents taking pictures.
Lucia celebration by the Swedish School in ChicagoThe older girls and the Lucia get real candles. They are very focused on standing still…Photo op in better light and a better view of the “star boys”.
Watch today’s Lucia on Swedish Television. It is available until January 11th, 2013. Enjoy! Elisabeth
Christkind is to German kids what Santa is to American. Christkind visits on Christmas day to put presents around the tree. Kids are kept away with closed doors to the living room until a little bell is heard. That means Christkind has finished its mission and the family can be let in to marvel at the pile under the tree. Christkind (“Christ Child”) has long golden hair and angelic wings and is a central part of opening ceremonies at many German Christmas markets, which are often called “Christkindlmarkt”. Here is a glimpse of the Nürnberg Christkindlesmarkt
Chicago has its own Christkindlmarket with tight ties to the Nürnberg one on which it is modeled. The opening ceremony (Nov 20, 2012, 4:30pm) often gets visits from the Nürnberg mayor and the previous Nürnberg Christkindl. This year, you can meet & greet the Christkindl on November 22, 11:00am, right after the Chicago Christmas parade. Being brought up with a mix of Swedish and German Christmas traditions, I love to go to the Christkindlmarket for some real German Bratvurst, Kartoffelpuffers and to look at the handcrafted ornaments that look just like those my grandmother had. Except for skyscrapers instead of small half-timbered houses surrounding the market, it does take me back to Germany for a little while. German vendors come all the way here just for this, which gives it an authentic flair. This year, there is a new section at the NE corner of the plaza. That is where you will find the booth of the Swedish Amercian Museum, filled with Swedish ornaments, handcrafted collectible tomten (Santas), Angel Chime rotary brass candle holders, wonderful wood toys for children, funflector® safety reflectors in fun shapes for kids and adults, and a wide assortment of Scandanavian books. Here are some pics from previous years:
Hot pretzels at Chicago Christkindlmarket – one of many culinary memories revived
Chicago Christkindlmarket – a genuine piece of the old world in a new world setting.
Handcrafted German wooden choir boys with typical curled wood trees and a chapel.
My own set of cherished wooden choir boys, probably bought by my Grandma in the 60’s.
… before Halloween! One last weekend to head for the local pumpkin patch or a haunted house. Pumpkin Patches and More is an extensive directory of pumpkin patches by county. If you don’t see the links right away, just scroll down. They also have tips on carving pumkins, recepies and much more.
Jack O’Lantern Halloween Reflectors – cheaper by the dozen at the funflector webshop. Available in 5 and 12-packs.
If you hurry up, you can still order your Halloween decoration and costumes online. Vote with your wallet and buy American made products! Keepamerica.com has a large selection of cool Halloween items, all supporting US manufacturing. US made Halloween reflectors are of course available in our webshop! Don’t forget to check out our Halloween specials at shopinterest! We ship as fast as we can, but don’t wait much longer to place your order to get it in time!
Metal candy bucket, window decoration and bat earrings – all made in the US and available at keepamerica.com
We’d like to share some great examples of how quality of life improves when public health workers and the urban planning and transportation offices work together and keep pedestrians and bicyclists in mind.
The North Shore Bike Path through Libertyville, IL has gone from passive to active transportation. It was once a local railroad, now used by bicyclists, runners and dog walkers.
The American Public Health Association and the Safe Routes to School National Partnership has put together a new report (16 MB pdf) with a lot of interesting findings. “Luckily, a small but passionate movement in the United States is happening to create healthier, more connected communities — where there are safe places to walk, bicycle and play, and public transit is within walking distance of home or work. This movement is aiming to ensure that the healthy choice is also the easiest one. …With the growing rate of obesity, the high cost of gas and climate change, we must rethink and reshape our transportation systems and networks to promote active transportation.” Promoting Actice Transportation: An Opportunity for Public Health. Read it for inspiration on how you can influence your community to improve active transporation.
Case studies of Southern California, Columbus (OH) and Houghton (MI)
Every Swede grows up with “There is no bad weather, only bad clothes”. If they don’t get it from their parents, they certainly hear it from teachers all the way from preschool and up. Since kids in preschools and elementary schools go outside every day, they are expected to have rain clothes, boots, snow pants, hats etc on hand all the time. Good gear for bad weather is a must. Active Kids Club wrote about “polar bear moms”, but it is not just moms carrying on this Scandinavian tradition, it is engraved in society.
Good (reflective!) outdoor gear for bad weather.
In other words, drizzling rain is not an excuse for not biking to school or work. So where do you find good gear for all weathers in the US?
Our popular ghost safety reflectors have got a new sibling! We’ve added a blue one and restocked the best-sellers white and bright green. The green is even brighter than before! Check them out at the glimling webshop and if you don’t want ghosts on your coat or bag, there are many, many more designs to choose from.
Backpack with ghost safety reflectors. Backpack from Target.
We are also excited to support American workers by manufacturing them in the USA!
Equinox is behind us and evenings are rapidly getting darker. Whether you are out on Halloween or on any other night, pedestrian safety reflectors are a great way to increase your visibility! Kids, tweens, teens and adults without reflectors are all equally difficult for drivers to see. By wearing reflectors you give drivers several extra seconds to notice you, which will help them to slow down or stop if needed.
This is a guest post that I wrote for the blog The Swedish American Mamma* last year. Thought it would be neat to share here too, since it sums up where we come from. I’m a Swedish mom myself and also work hard to keep our Swedish heritage alive in my children. Scandinavian products help so I’m glad to have found the Swedish American Mamma blog! Another tricky thing is to keep some of the Swedish mindset and attitudes alive. And they can be surprisingly different, for example when it comes to being outdoors or safety.
No matter where in the Scandinavians countries you happen to be, midsummer means long nights that never get really dark. Where there is no midnight sun, dusk blurs into dawn without night in between. This is the time of year that many Scandinavians long for all winter and their love for summer and nature is deeply embedded in the culture. While Americans celebrate the end of the hot summer and a successful harvest with Thanksgiving, Scandinavians celebrate the arrival of spring and new life with music and dances. There are numerous Swedish songs about nature, and most of them are about spring and summer. The hymn “Den blomstertid nu kommer” celebrates the return of the “flower season” and is sung at most last-day-of-school celebrations in early June. Maja’s Alphabet songs, popular with schools and children’s choirs, are all about different plants found in nature. This one is about an ash tree and this one is about poppies.
Typical Swedish American Mamma – go outside every day is vital, no matter what the weather is like.
However, if you think Scandinavians stay inside during the cold and dark half of the year, you have deeply miscalculated their love for the outdoors. My oldest child started daycare in March, a time when there is nothing but wet snow and mud in the Stockholm area. With water proof boots, good snow suits plus vinyl overalls, the kids had a blast in the muddy yard. “There is no bad weather, just bad gear” is a phrase and an attitude that every Swede grows up with. There is a lot of truth in an article about polar bear moms, but I’m not sure we are quite that ambitious every day… In addition to their love for nature, Scandinavians are well known for their creative design. Combine that with the Swedish passion for traffic safety (just think “Volvo”) and you end up with fun colorful reflectors that make you visible to drivers when it is dark. However, the reflectors haven’t always been colorful or fun.
My mom wearing a hard reflector, typical in Sweden until late 1990’s.
When I went to school in the 70’s and 80’s, we all had reflectors. Recently, someone told me that insurance companies handed them out. Reflectors are cheap life savers, so that makes a lot of sense! Those we had were made from hard, clear plastic and came with a string and a safety pin. We pinned them inside our jacket pockets and while out in the dark, they were dangling at knee height to notify drivers about our presence. The strings easily got tangled up with keys left in the pocket and the reflectors made an annoying clanking sound whenever they swung into other things around you. In the late 90’s, 3M launched a patented reflective vinyl foil, that could be turned into colorful, lightweight soft reflectors. All of a sudden, people started to wear reflectors because they looked cool! No longer did they need to be hidden in pockets during day time, so the string was replaced with a short ball chain. A recent poll among Swedes shows that about 90% of kids and 50% of parents wear reflectors. About 30% of the Finns wear them as well. That prevents many nighttime pedestrian accidents!
In America, the concept of hanging reflectors on your jacket, backpack, purse, briefcase, stroller, wheelchair or dog is little known. At Halloween (the biggest danger for kids that night is getting hit by a car), reflective tape is frequently recommended, but how cool is that? So after moving to the US with my three grade school kids, I set out to launch a line of fun reflectors for the North American market under the trademark funflector®. To make it fun and cool to be safe all year around, we work with Swedish designers living in the US, to get the best from both worlds. Enjoy the picture gallery and stay safe!
Elisabeth
* Update 2014: Sadly, the Swedish American Mamma blog is no longer live which is the reason there is no link to it.
Coming soon: Made in the USA! (and so is the scrapbooking paper by DCWV INC.)
We are super excited about being on the way to move production of some funflector® reflectors from Sweden to the USA! It makes a lot of sense to us to manufacture locally but we are also very proud to do more to put Americans to work! Future batches of our popular chubby ghost safety reflectors will be made in the USA! The funflector team
Sweden is closed today. Very closed. It is midsummer eve. Check out this funny and accurate video Swedish Midsummer for Dummies if you want to know what Swedes are up to!
Here in the lower 48, the nights are not nearly as long and bright as in the Scandinavian countries or Alaska. Instead they are dark and warm, inviting to outdoor activities while the blasting sun is in hiding. Pedestrian safety reflectors are a must-have.
The International Space Station passing by Chicago, June 21st, 2012.
Last night, we were out to watch the ISS (International Space Station) passing by Chicago at sunset. With a crystal clear sky and a sliver of a moon, we were amazed that we could see its prolonged shape.
An angel has landed 😉
We also discovered that a funflector® wrap, our slap bracelet reflector, looks like an angel’s gloria when you use it around your head, which reminded us to let you know that we now also have angel safety reflectors in our webshop!
Angel reflectors are now available in our web shop.
When you live abroad with kids, how do you keep your heritage and language alive? In addition to speaking Swedish at home, attending Swedish School and SWEA events, we play a mix of Swedish rock, pop, jazz and classical music and songs for kids in the car. A few days ago, a friend who is a wonderful singer asked me to suggest some CD’s with Swedish songs to sing with her grandkids (age 3 and below) and I thought there might be others out there who’d like to know.
När dagen tagit slut och när nattskjortan är på… – from the song “Kaprifol” (Honeysuckle) of “Majas alfabetssånger”
So here are our personal favorites:
Majas Alfabetssånger – CD and Book Wonderful lyrics with creative and varied music to 26 songs about plants, one for each letter of the Swedish alphabet (almost). A wonderful way not only to share the language and music with kids, but also the love for nature that is so much a part of Swedish culture.
The Mamma Mu songs by Jujja and Tomas Wieslander make great entertainment for little quirky minds. Sing along in the car or at home. Get the packages with CD and booklet with suggestions for motions (“rörelsehäfte”) to go with the songs. The motions make it even more fun but they also help kids connect the words to body parts, motions and everyday toddler activities. “Min lilla kråksång” has the song about ants and moose clapping that I mentioned in the moose blog post last week.
Alice Babs did not just sing with Ulrik Neumann, Svend Asmussen, Charlie Norman and Duke Ellington, but also lent her versatile voice to enchant generations of Swedish kids with a number of records/CD’s. If you’d like a good singer along with the kid’s music, this is better than you can dream of. The much loved Alice Tegnér songs are available in a traditional version from 1963 (Sjung med oss, Mamma) and with a more modern twist from 2003 (Sjung med oss Mamma, vol II). Our favorite, however, is the “Hej du måne”, a collections of songs that take advantage of the range of Alice Babs’ mesmerizing voice. Those songs can be found on the second half of “Den olydiga ballongen” CD.
Lennart Hellsings’ Krakel Spektakel has been around for a while, but the songs are are still going strong. His books and tongue twister lyrics are fun to share and a great source for intriguing discussions with preschool kids. Do you remember “Sudda, sudda” or “Min Ponny” by Gullan Bornemark? She just keeps coming up with lyrics and music that kids love, so there are many, many recordings to choose between. The CD “Klang i Bygget” has mostly newer songs, but also some of the older favorites. The Real Group singing “Hösten hälsar på” is of course a treat. There is also one about moose 🙂 The CD also has tracks with the band but no vocals for those who want to sing along on their own.
Several of the CD’s are available at Amazon.com, but most seem to be out of stock right now. So you might want to pick them up in Sweden during your next trip or ask friends or relatives to send or bring them.
Kerstin Andeby, who composed the music to “Majas alfabetssånger” is now working with Peter Wanngren to create “Musik för barn”, about eight CD’s from Naxos with the 100 most loved children’s songs. Listen to a radio interview here (in Swedish). The two first are about to be released. Something to look out for during future visits to Sweden!
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