A Swedish Christmas

Have you been enjoying the week of posts about mom’s house at Christmas? If you are just joining us here’s what you missed: the best of her nativity collection, the most bizarre nativities and her two Christmas trees!

And for the final post of the week I’m showing off her Swedish Christmas decor!  I mentioned earlier in the week that she hosts a multitude of people every year at Christmas at three separate Christmas parties all in one weekend.  Over the last few years she has picked a theme for her parties and this year it was a Swedish Christmas.  I am not mostly Swedish by percent, but as far as the heritage that has been celebrated in my life, the Swedes have been the strongest.  My great-grandfather was full blood Swede and my extended family all settled into a small Swedish community in Kansas.  So my mom and all her sisters grew up in a very Swedish community full of Larsons, Johnsons, and Isaacsons.  And so the Swedish traditions have stuck around a bit, we have tea ring (a breakfast roll) at many family gatherings and several members of my family decorate with the Dala Horse and straw decorations that permeate traditional Swedish decor.

So for her parties my mom collected some of my family’s decorations to supplement her own and we lucked out and found the little straw goats at Ikea for (you guessed it) super cheap.  Here they are all packed up in her suitcase like a miniature goat army:

She bought one of those little goats for each person at her party for favors and used them as napkin rings on her plates.  (I wish I had a good picture of it because it looked really cool with all of them lining the tables, but alas, her guests actually took their party favors home, so I didn’t get a photo of them).  She served at two tables, the first is in the living room:

The centerpiece of each table was a candle tree surrounded by greenery and goats. And those cute trees with the red berries might just make their way to my house sometime soon…

And look she even has nativities hanging on her candle trees:

These cute wooden ornaments are very Swedish and I love the little St. Lucia ones.

Her kitchen table looks very similar to the dining room table but has a little bit more blue on the candle tree:

And here you can see how she used the goats as napkin ring holders:

And last but not least she had the three goats guarding her drink station:

And that’s how you decorate for A Swedish Christmas! Mom served Swedish Meatballs, Tea Ring, dill potatoes, Potatis Skorv (a type of potato sausage dish) and ostakaka with She also served a non alcoholic glogg to drink.

I love the Swedish Christmas tradition of St. Lucia and as a kid always wanted to walk around with candles on my head, but unfortunately my parents thought maybe that was a disaster waiting to happen.