Fastelavn (aka Danish Halloween)

One of my favorite parts about living in Denmark is learning about and experiencing their culture and traditions that are so different from what I knew as a child. Which is why I was really excited about this weekend... Its Fastelavn!! :) Back in October I mentioned that danes don't typically celebrate Halloween in the fall- well this weekend is Danish Halloween :) Well, actually the only similarity is that little kids dress up and go from door to door collecting treats.

The two holidays have totally different origins- Halloween started as a harvest festival whereas Fastelavn is linked to the holidays leading up to Easter- specifically the Sunday or Monday before Ash Wednesday and Lent. Also, Fastelavn doesn't have any of the ghosts and golbins and witches and other scary things associated with it, but instead they tried to ward off evil spirits by putting a black cat in a barrel and hitting it repeatedly with a stick (think pinata style) These days the live cat is replaced by a picture of a cat on the outside of the barrel and candy or fruit instead :) The first person to break the barrel and let the treats out is crowned "Queen of Cats" and the person who gets the last piece of the barrel to fall is crowned "King of Cats"

This morning, Klaus took me to a farm where they have this all set up for kids to come play so that I could see it first hand! :) It was really funny to watch- especially since all of the kids had on full snowsuits under their costumes!

That's a lot of little danes swinging around sticks!

The little knight!

Pippi Longstockings & A giant banana

Lunch was Veggie Soup
and Pølser (hot dog/sausages)

Another very important part of Fastelavn is the pastries! :) Klaus baked some of the traditional fastelavnboller for us last night (gluten free of course!) and they were amazing!!! Flaky pastry filled with a vanilla custard and topped with icing- what's not to like???

Before

After

 

So that's pretty much Fastelavn in a nutshell- kids with sticks beating up barrels WITHOUT cats in them (anymore)... and yummy pastries! :) Woo-hoo! There's also something with twigs decorated with streamers and candy, but the only thing I could find out about where that comes from is that ultra-pious people used to flog their children on Good Friday with twigs to remind them of the suffering of Jesus on the cross, but now apparently its the children who flog their parents to wake them up on Fastelavn Sunday... weird danes... Not really sure about that part of the tradition. There's more about it on this wikipedia page.

 

I'm going to leave yall with a few pictures of the pretty snow (mostly because I know in a few weeks I might need to look back and remember that I really did think snow was beautiful at some point! haha!)

 

 

 

 

XOXO,

Joy