Today I rode the bicycle for 1 1/2 hours. It was hot, and maybe I pushed a bit too hard, as I was quite tired afterwards.
The photographs were taken at the Santa Claus Village in Lapland, near Rovaniemi, on July 20th. It wasn't a place where one would like to spend time, but we had a look anyway. These are illustrations of Finnish Christmas traditions.
(Posting title is from a poem by Anthony Hecht.)
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4 comments:
Aah, not as glitzy as the Disney version would be... Those demons remind me very much of their Bavarian counterparts, the Perchten, and it could well be that they have a similar pagan origin
Indeed, the original Finnish "joulupukki", "Christmas goat", was intended to frighten the children, and he brought dry twigs for flogging bad children. Pagan origins, indeed. Much later we got the Coca-Cola version of Santa Claus.
Santa Claus - kind of super infectious disease...
Another such thing is Halloween, which has been infecting children here in Finland. And some parents also.
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