The Swedish queen of crime fiction, Camilla Läckberg, likes to provoke. On December 4, 2022, on her Instagram account (320,000 subscribers), the writer, mother of four children, put her feet in the dish. “Lucia [la Sainte-Lucie, le 13 décembre, célébrée dans tout le royaume]Christmas, yes all these fucking holidays cause a lot of stress for women »she observed, affirming herself “feeling the pressure, as a woman and mother, not only to provide, but to over-insure”. She recalled the incident which had earned her a slew of reproaches, a few years ago, when she had the misfortune of posting a photo of her daughter in a crumpled white Saint Lucia dress: wasn’t she then able to iron?
In Swedish, there is a word for this state of tension caused by the holidays: we call it julstress. ” The key ” to escape it, assured Camilla Läckberg, is to do “good enough” without aiming ” perfection “. You also have to choose your battles: “never, no never”she would not, for example, let an elf move into her house – a reference to this new tradition causing cold sweats among parents, forced to imagine, from 1er on December 24, the daily pranks of an invisible elf, who would have installed himself behind a miniature door, stuck on their wall.
In Sweden, the celebrations begin at the beginning of December, and continue until New Year’s Eve, according to a well-regulated ceremonial. Officially, the festivities kick off on the first Sunday of Advent: the stars begin to shine in the windows, we light the first of the four Advent candles and we open a bottle of glögg (mulled wine). The countdown begins.
Ginger paste and calendar race
To avoid “Christmas stress”, Kristina Ekberg, psychiatrist, mother of two girls aged 13 and 15, who lives in Malmö, gets organized. She looks for small gifts or activity ideas for the family weeks in advance. “Christmas treasure hunt” that she concocts every year for her daughters, who find a clue every morning when they wake up. “I grew up with this tradition, but in the 1970s and 1980s we only received a package on Sunday”, she confides. At the end of November, she also prepares the ginger paste, which will be used to make the pepparkakorthese little cookies in the shape of a tree, heart or pig, which the Swedes enjoy on all occasions during the last month of the year.
For Helena Lindstedt, an Ikea employee and mother of a 14-year-old girl, preparations also start very early. She and her daughter are hunting down the best Christmas calendar. “When she was little, I did it myself. I bought bars, stickers, pralines… But in recent years, calendars from major beauty product brands have become very popular with teenagers”, observes Helena Lindstedt. You have to do it in time: “Some YouTubers rate them as early as September and the best ones are sold out in a few minutes. » Their price: between 1,500 and 2,000 crowns (130 and 175 euros) – knowing that on average, Swedes spent 570 euros per person for Christmas in 2022 (including 57% for gifts), according to a bank survey Nordea.
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