Major Danish holidays 101
Happy New Year, Swappers! If you spent this past holiday season in Denmark, or with Danes, there’s a good chance that a lot of you have run into some traditions you maybe didn’t know about. In fact, there are so many holidays that we don’t have time to talk about them all. So, today we will take a look at the 5 largest Danish holidays that you should know!
A lot of Danish holidays are based around the Christian calendar, so some things may be familiar to you if your culture also has a Christian influence. Denmark became a Christian country in 965, but today only an estimated 2-4% of Danes are practicing Christians. Most Danes are aware of the Biblical stories and the origins of Christian holidays, but there are probably just as many, if not more, who celebrate holidays because “that’s just what we usually do”.
Fastelavn (February)
The first of our major Danish holidays of the year is Fastelavn, which means “the evening before Lent”. Lent is the Christian fasting period that comes before Easter, and Fastelavn happens 50 days before Easter Sunday. Since the dates of Easter fluctuate, so does Fastelavn. This year, Fastelavn falls on February 27th!
Fastelavn is a holiday characterized by costumes and carnival, and many Danes are quite reluctant to adopt Halloween into Danish culture because we have already had Fastelavn for centuries. It was originally a pagan tradition of, celebrating the end of winter and the beginning of spring. It predates Christianity coming to Denmark, but since then, the celebration merged with Lent. This created Fastelavn, an almost sort of winter festival for playing, eating, and drinking to your hearts’ content right before starting the fast.
Today, kids will dress up in various costumes and walk from house to house, singing songs with a trick-or-treat theme, hoping to get sweets or a little money. Bakeries will make special pretty, decorated cream-filled pastries in the weeks around Fastelavn, called “Fastelavnsboller”.
Fastelavn events will be held by schools or local communities, where kids can show up in their costumes and take turns hitting a suspended barrel with a bat. This is called “slå katten af tønden” (hit the cat out of the barrel). Whoever breaks the barrel first becomes “Kattedronning” (cat queen), while the person who brings the very last board down becomes “Kattekonge” (cat king).
Nowadays, the barrels luckily only contain candy and sweets, but the cat theme stems from a pretty dark tradition. A few hundred years ago it was tradition to place a living, black cat inside the barrel and, unfortunately, beat it. It was an old belief at the time, that hitting the cat out the barrel was a way to drive out evil spirits from the village. The practice was thankfully outlawed, and today we paint cat designs on the barrel instead.
Påske
Påske is the Danish word for the Christian holiday Easter, and it is a moving holiday period like in many other countries. This year it spans from April 10th to April 18th, where most schools and some workplaces go on Easter break over this time. However, many businesses only close down on the actual holidays – Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and Easter Monday.
Families and friends use this free time to get together and have påskefrokost (Easter lunch). Usually, Påskefrokost consists of smørrebrød (open sandwiches) with a wide range of toppings including eggs, cured meats, fish, etc. It’s all washed down with påskeøl (easter beer!) and schnapps, and it often doesn’t end until the evening.
Easter is associated with all things spring – flowers, pastel colors, animals, slightly warmer weather, etc. As in many other countries, eggs are also a big theme, and in Denmark, they are laid by påskeharen (the Easter bunny). The idea of the Easter bunny came to Denmark from Germany where it was originally a pagan symbol of spring and fertility.
The Easter bunny comes and lays chocolate eggs for the kids and there are several traditions connected to this, such as egg-hunting, rolling eggs downhill, and painting eggs. In Southern Jutland, it’s tradition to build a soft nest out of moss and grass for the Easter bunny to put its eggs in.
A tradition that seems to be uniquely Danish is gækkebreve! It roughly means “trick letter”, and has been a traditional gag for centuries. Included in the letter is a snowdrop flower, which is called vintergæk in Danish. It’s called this because these flowers often start appearing quite a while before spring actually comes, tricking you into thinking winter might be ending. Vinter means winter (wow, easy huh?), and gæk can be translated as trickery.
Today gækkebreve is mostly done by children. Fold a piece of paper and cut shapes into the sides to reveal a symmetrical pattern when unfolded. Inside the paper, you write a riddle that rhymes, with dots in place of the sender’s name. The recipient then has 3 guesses to figure out who the sender might be – if they guess correctly, they win a chocolate easter egg! If they lose, they have to give a chocolate egg to the sender instead.
Sankthansaften
This holiday, “Saint John’s Eve”, is a celebration of summer solstice on June 23rd. Despite being named after a Christian saint (Johannes Døberen = John the Baptist), it is actually a an old pagan tradition. It was co-opted by Christian missionaries to serve as a Christian celebration, and they named it Sankt Hans after Johannes Døberen (John the Baptist) because his birthday is said to be June 24th.
For Sankthans, communities get together at one big event, often in open fields, by lakes, or on the beach. Depending on the size of the celebration, it can almost feel like a small 1-day festival with live music and refreshment stands. Usually, a local politician or figure might make a speech. You will maybe see huge piles of wood being gathered over the course of the year in the locations where the celebration will take place.
These huge communal bonfires will be lit, and attendees will sing Midsommervisen (“the midsummer song”), which is about hoping for peace. Traditionally, a doll representing a witch is placed on top to be burned with the bonfire. There were never any real “witches” who got burned, and the tradition itself is only around 120 years old.
The burning of the witch doll comes from another holiday, Valborgsaften (Walpurgis Night). This holiday, May 1st, isn’t really noticed in Denmark anymore, as it was mixed with Sankhans. It was said that witches would have large meetings on Valborgsaften, and so it was tradition to light huge bonfires to scare off the witches and other evil spirits. They didn’t burn witch dolls, but this is where the witch imagery comes from.
Jul
Christmas. This is the number 1 Danish holiday, and there is a wide range of traditions spread over the whole month of December. It’s celebrated on December 24th – Juleaftensdag, and almost all shops and transport stops running this day. The same goes for the 25th and the 26th as well. They are also considered Christian holidays, and many Danes use these days to visit friends and family that they weren’t able to see on Christmas eve.
Like other major Danish holidays we’ve talked about, Danes had a pagan winter celebration even before Denmark became Christian in 965. Since before the Viking age, there has been a need to break the monotony of the dark months of winter. It’s a different celebration now, but the need to light up the dark winters is a huge part of Danish culture.
So, it’s maybe not that surprising to learn that Denmark is apparently the largest consumer of candles in the world. Danes care a lot about lighting up the dark days with as much hygge lighting as possible, and candlelight is #1 for that. It’s also customary in Demark to have a kalenderlys – a candle burning from 1 to 24 as a countdown for Christmas Eve.
On top of that, it’s tradition to have another countdown mechanism for Advent – usually in the form of a wreath with 4 candles. On the 1st Sunday in Advent you light the first candle, on the 2nd you can light the first 2, and so forth.
It is also a long-standing tradition in Denmark to have julekalendere (TV advent calendars), with the first one airing in 1962. The main channels for these are DR and TV2, but a lot of Danish TV stations now have their own julekalender airing each year. There’s always a mix of reruns of older calendars as well as new ones being produced every year.
There is a huge tradition around julekalender for most Danes, because children and adults can sit down together and enjoy an episode per day of magical Christmas adventures. If you go to any Christmas parties, chances are that a lot of the Danish Christmas songs on the list are songs from different calendars that have basically reached cult classic status in the collective mind of Danes – almost everyone knows the lyrics by heart.
If you want to learn Danish, we really urge you to watch some of the old julekalendere. They are a huge source of nostalgia for Danes, and are very entertaining! If you don’t know how to get started with Danish, learn with Swap language and let us help you make it easy and fun!
As you might imagine, there’s a lot of tradition around Danish Christmas food. For many Danes, Christmas Eve is one of the only times of the year that they eat this kind of older traditional food, so we really cherish and savor it. The Christmas dinner usually consists of roast pork and/or roast duck, pickled red cabbage, white potatoes and caramelized potatoes, and brown gravy.
After everyone has stuffed themselves to their breaking point, risalamande is served: a quite heavy rice pudding with cherry sauce. Traditionally there’s a game in connection to this dessert – whoever finds the single whole almond in the pudding wins a present.
Many families still light real candles on their Christmas tree, and then we dance (more like walk) around the Christmas tree while singing Christmas songs or carols while holding hands. Finally, we open all our presents together. That’s right, we open presents on the night of the 24th, rather than the morning of the 25th.
In the weeks before Christmas Eve, a lot of people will also attend one or several julefrokoster (Christmas lunch) with coworkers or friends, or even extended family. These Christmas lunches mostly start in the afternoon or night, where you sit down to eat traditional dishes like smørrebrød, frikadeller, sild, etc., accompanied by schnapps.
We also play pakkeleg – a dice game in which everyone will have brought a small, cheap gift and now everyone has to compete to get as many gifts as possible before the timer runs out.
Nytår
In Denmark, nytår (New Year) is typically a holiday you celebrate with friends. It is also the only holiday where we use fireworks, and it’s illegal to buy and fire off fireworks outside of a 2 week period in December.
For parties, many people like to get together around 5-6PM, so that they can sit down together and watch the Queen’s speech that is televised live at 6PM. The Queen’s speech is a tradition that dates back to 1958 when King Christian IIIIX made the first televised New Year’s speech. The tradition has remained virtually unchanged since.
Some regions have traditional foods for New Year’s Eve, such as kale sausages, glazed ham, and caramelized potatoes. But many also just make whatever fancy feast they would like with their friends. Most people see this holiday as a day to dress up really fancy and make good cocktails, as well as wearing silly hats and setting off table bombs.
Right before midnight, everyone will climb on top of chairs and couches. If you’ve seen this first hand, you were probably pretty confused. But it’s tradition to “jump into the new year”, and so people will jump from furniture right as the clock strikes midnight! It’s said to bring bad luck for the new year if you forget to do this. Holding a coin in your hand while jumping is also said to bring financial luck.
When midnight arrives, it’s time to pop the champagne and eat kransekage! This Danish marzipan cake can be eaten any time of year but is traditionally the dessert to eat at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Everyone will then go outside to either set off their own fireworks or watch all the fireworks in the neighborhood.
Ready to partake?
We hope that after reading this article, you feel prepared to experience and take part in these major Danish holidays. Modern Danish holidays are really one big mix of pagan rituals and Christian customs. But what is common for almost every single tradition, is that hygge is in the center of it all.
Danish holidays are more about togetherness, and less about religion. Making dedicated time for having fun and spending time with your loved ones is always the goal, so we are confident you will enjoy Danish traditions!
