Celebrate Christmas like a Finnish pagan! Old Finnish Christmas traditions explained 

also Prof Thomas DuBois has written books on Nordic religions. I heard him speak on the Finnic people involved in the Viking voyages and culture

Us Finns should wake up and stop speading this religion that was forced upon us. We are pagans. That’s in our blood and in this land.

im a descendant of like 5 different forest sámi families and christianity never stuck with us. I'm starting to feel like i could do more to preserve the polytheist religion around here

Thanks! Glad to hear

Thanks so much!

Thank you for watching!

I kind of remember santa was was drawn with red clothing by some alcoholic guy from finland for coca cola

Many thanks & merry Yule time to you!

Samoin!

Sitä samaa!

Sitä samaa!

Thanks Keith!

I would like a sizeable limppu with butter right now. Hyvää joulua!

Thank you! Good to hear that the heritage still flows strong. Where is your family from if I may ask? Mattila is a common name.

@@Anttimation I'll get back to you on the Mattilas,but my grandfaer taught the young ones the bow,and talked of when finland defeated denmark. The sami were the Hiattilas.

they were up---- in finnish lap-----land,Karita Mattila is a second cousin

Thanks so much!

🙌🙌

I don't know about the origins of trick-or-treating but kekri and Samhain are essentially the same thing - a harvest festival where our world opens to the otherworld.

Interesting insight. Punky night (if I'm not mistaken) travelled to America from Scotland and became trick or treat. In England we had no Halloween until the last few decades. Bonfire night(burning Guy Fawkes effigies) and fireworks was more important; but all these Northern European traditions intermingle.

​@@LeoniFermer-vi4dc Trick or treating in the States was brought by Irish immigrants & comes from the Samhain tradition of collecting soul cakes & leaving food offerings for the local spirits & the spirits of those who had passed during the previous year, and while going house to house collecting them, dressing up in a way to blend in with wandering entities, spirits, spooks, etc who crossed back over while the veil between worlds was thin. Anyone unwilling to give these offerings, not honoring the ancestors could have bad consequences in life for not respecting them, & not being generous, welcoming & sharing, & as a result the tricks are a reminder of that or a symbolic lesson carried out on the behalf of the ancestors & local spirits, a warning bc more misfortune always follows being unprepared &/or ungenerous. Winter was coming, better be stocked up, for one practical matter besides that, & better weave sharing into a culture that is far north, & anywhere really. But weather in a cold climate & a place that can be quite stormy & also many being near the shore, comes with conditions in which it's especially crucial & in turn these things lead to community spirit. They are also lessons within traditions, survival skills, life force & death & symbolic consequences to be mindful of the dire potential real consequences as well as spiritual beliefs & the healthiness of keeping culture & tradition. It's recorded when it arrived with the Irish, & pumpkins replacing the turnips (swedes) bc the turnips were smaller & pumpkins easier to use. The story of Jack & his lantern is not Celtic origins, but added later, rather more modern. It's online. Punky night came much later from ancient Celtic old ways. I have Sámi, Finn, & Irish on my mom's side, & had first generation immigrants very very old but still around in my early childhood & spent most of my time with them all. & Irish cousins, of Celtic tradition, one who spent his life researching. In the NE melting pot areas, we had this throughout grade school then more on the "darker" aspects later on. Bc of this, you can look it up online. But the Scottish traditions are closely related to the Irish, anyway as people moved back and forth way way back. Just, Punky Night is later, like Halloween is. A more modern take.

Thank you very much! I don't know about Bulgarian traditions but if it is a harvest celebration similar to Samhain/Halloween, then it would be pretty safe to guess they come from the same ancient traditions, much like Yule as you said

Cheers mate!

Krampus is more mid-european.

@@naihaseo9840 Very good...the more I know. Even though I'm American, I know my heritage is Slovak, Polish, Lithuanian etc. I even made a big pot of Haluski (cabbage and noodles) for Christmas dinner like my gramma used to make. My dad says we would be referred to as "hunky" but that is supposed to be slang and an insult of some sort. I don't know, I've been called worse!!

From back in my high school days playing Slayer, Overkill, Helloween etc (I was in a very young cover band, but we did well)...I guess you know KORPIKLAANI - Lempo. Pretty good tune. Hadda look up the trandlation 'cause I had no clue what they were saying, buy nonetheless, all good. Anything from a country led by a looker of a lady is worth it :)

​@@slb159 It's not that Krampus is a monster. The church demonized the pagan tradition as they had a habit of doing. So that's not exactly what's up. He's the root origin of knowing if you've been good or bad. He'd get ya if you were messing around in rotten ways. He's Alpine. If you look it up look for pre-christian understanding bc some sources are heavily influenced by the later conversion & church turning any being into a demon. He's not one. It's more like a nature spirit qualified to detect a bad human nature & teach that person a lesson. Those who didn't mistreat, abuse or take advantage of others had nothing to fear but those who did could get whacked with cleansing birch switches (birch is sweetening, clears bad energy) or if really bad dragged off to the underworld... & coal & its blackening is in there somewhere. He's a consequence, not a mindless beast or monster. & There's a relationship with goats, at the root, not demons or the devil. Clergy were just scared of him. & Of anything pagan & saw tons of things as evil that they did not understand. Alpine sources that aren't at all churchy have put the origins & current traditions online including Krampuslauf, running through the streets dressed as Krampus, on Krampusnacht (nacht means night) & he has relatives, similar beings some for different times of the year too, in various Alpine regions & recognized in their cultural traditions. Those are really cool, too. 😁 There's a difference between monster & a fearsome being that's only fearsome to you if you F around & find out. 😂 It's actually that he's a helpful being. Selfishness or harm get handled. Learn the first time, or vanish. 😁 People might con others, lie, cover up what they pull but there is no tricking a spiritual being, like Krampus. He just knows. "You better watch out..." comes from Krampus tradition & "you better not cry, pout..." is bc his consequences come just to those that earned them.

Thanks & you too! It is a small "fish cock" - pastry with fish (and bacon) inside. Common traveller's snack back in the days and still traditional in Eastern Finland - but with rye pastry. The picture(s) is from a Medieval themed dinner where I made several Medieval Finnish foods.

Kiitos itsellesi!

Thank you! Yours is the second comment to bring this up. Do you know if he suggests a connection to the Santa Claus lore?

@@Anttimation I have heard him speak and have much of his work. If I remember correctly, he does. He presented in a lecture an old drawing of a Finnish skier who skies until he dies and then passes upward through an aperture in the sky. He related this to a long standing element in Finnish consciousness and read a passage of Urho Kekkonen that reflected this. Again I believe that Pentikainen did also make the shaman/Santa Clause connection, but that specific connection might have been from elsewhere. He is a great source for the enduring elements of the ancient Finnic worldview

@@Anttimation The FINNFEST in the USA will be held in the interesting Minnesota town of Duluth in summer of 2023. Visit! Present something. I hope to be there. I attended interesting stuff 2 decades ago in FinnFest in Toronto

Would love to hear more about the Santa connection , looking for the origin of things is interesting to me. Others just don’t care about anything except for the current state of things. I’m a bit weird because of this

@@Robert-gc9gc Juha Y. Pentikäinen & Prof Thomas DuBois have written well on origins in Nordic topics

Mistä tiesit tänne tulla?

Tulin pitkin turuntietä

ouuuu sorry but your whole religion is fake :/

Merry Yule! I don't know much about Sami tradition and lore. Even when reading about Finnish mythology it is mentioned/compared surprisingly rarely.

Likewise!