Day 581: Bewitching Maundy Thursday AKA Skärtorsdag

Ah those days, when we would dress up like old crones.

Easter, that time of year. Everyone's eating easter eggs and sweets and actual eggs and thinking about Jesus maybe. And most importantly the kids are dressing up as witches and going trick or treating...or, no? Wait, isn't that Halloween?

If you ever wanted to see in action the random smashing together of Christian holidays with days of other Pagan traditions, Sweden is THE PLACE. You can tell people that Christmas is in December because of Saturnalia, but nobody remembers what Saturnalia is any more. Or you can explain that Halloween is suspiciously similar to Gaelic Samhain, but people don't really know what that is either.

In England people eat buns with crosses on (because Jesus.) and eat chocolate eggs (because rebirth. And spring.) But just try to explain how little kids dressing up like crones, carrying around coffee pans with tea towels on their heads and going door to door asking for money has anything to do with Easter.

Since the witch trials in Sweden in the 1600's people have believed that Skärtorsdag, the Thursday before Easter, is the day when all the witches fly off on their brooms (or cats, or other household items) to go to a mountain called Blåkulla and have sex with the devil. If  you can read Swedish then there's a lovely graphic description of the devil's penis on the relevant Wikipedia page. Interestingly the English version of the same Wikipedia page doesn't give anything near the same level of detail.

But you know, Easter was already near the devil-witch-sex time so why not nowadays just combine everything and have the kids dress up as witches and sell cards with the Easter bunny door to door?

Witches on household items = Hocus Pocus

Quite how witches went from being detested and feared to being emulated with cutesy costumes is a little bit lost on me. How Swedish people think it's totally normal to have Easter witches and have no understanding as to why is further lost still.