St. Knut’s Day – Looting the Christmas Tree

Last year I wrote about St. Knut’s Day, a holiday celebrated on January 13th, in Sweden, Finland and Norway. St. Knut’s Day is all about getting rid of all the Christmas decorations and throwing out the tree, thus ending the Christmas season.

When I wrote about it last year, I asked if anyone knew of any St. Knut’s Day songs. Recently Kristina wrote in with a song, and with interesting information about the holiday…

There is one song that is sung on Knut:

In Swedish:

Nu är glada julen slut, slut, slut.
Julegranen bäres ut, ut, ut.
Men till nästa jul igen,
kommer han vår gamle vän,
för det har han lovat.

In English:

Now the merry Christmas is over, over, over,
The Christmas tree is carried out, out, out,
But for next Christmas again,
He is coming our old friend
Because he has promised that.

Knut was/is a rather festive day. At least up until 50 years ago. Children liked it a lot as the tree was often decorated with candy (candy canes, sugar decorations and smällkarameller / crackers with hidden bits of candy). All Christmas they had to look at these sweets without eating them, but on Knut all decorations were taken down and the candy could be eaten. That is called julgransplundring (Christmas tree looting).

As we no longer have much candy on the trees and few people want to eat old candy, it’s not as big as it used to be. Some still see it as a festive day and invite kids over for a kids party where they hand out candy. There are also some different local traditions.