And Skärtorsdag literally means pink Thursday (not too sure about that one).

According to folk law today is the day the Witches flew to Blåkulla to consort with the devil. This resulted in all sorts of activities to make their journey more difficult, such as hiding broomsticks and rakes so the witches could not fly on them, painting crosses on their front doors and lighting the odd bonfire to scare them away.

These days the tradition is for kids to dress up as Easter witches, with scarves on their heads, brightly colored clothing, rosy cheeks and painted on freckles. The go from door to door in their neighborhood handing out hand-made Easter cards and wish their neighbors Happy Easter.
We had a little Easter witch knock on our door this morning, only to return a few minutes later to collect her friend. Once the two of them announced they were heading off their brothers wanted to join them and it wasn't too long before they all headed off.

30 minutes later they had handed out all their cards and had 2 baskets filled with candy, chocolate, sultanas, chips & apples!

But they are so cute, how could anyone refuse them?

Pippi Longstocking is not everyone's favorite. My older sister remembers her being banned in our household and neither my younger sister nor I knew who she was by the time we reached adulthood.

A few years ago we were watching the Swedish version (compliments of my daughter) and we talked about how controversial she must have been in her day, and how much of a role model she is here in Sweden, even if Astrid never intended it to be that way.

Without doubt you could write an entire paper (or two) about Pippi, about the chicken and the egg theory - did she influence or reflect earlier Swedish attitudes? You could write about her character traits and her attitudes, about her presence in every Swedish child's mind, about women (and men) in Sweden today and their position in the world, in the work place, in society, and in the home. I wonder how many papers out there have been written on Pippi.

And although we have had the 60th Anniversary of Pippi she still continues to influence and to be a role model. Swedish newspaper SvD reported recently on the Swedish Attorney General's letter to her French colleague Rachida Dati. Beatrice Ask's empathy must have been strong for this single mother who refused to name the father of her child and subsequently returned to work just 5 days after giving birth to her daughter. Ask was Minister of Education when she, as a single woman, gave birth to a son, returning to work immediately afterwards.

In her support amidst the controversy and rumors, Ask supposedly wrote: Pippi was an unusually strong and adventuresome girl with a warm heart. I think applies to you both.

Long live Pippi!!

There are things I love about life in Sweden, and plenty of things I don't like at all. I often find myself thinking about them - both at home here, at home in Australia and when we are in Canada.

That is the fate of an expat - to compare the way things are, the way they are done, the history, the culture, the way of life. It doesn't mean we don't love the country and culture we come from, or the one we now live in. It doesn't mean we don't get homesick, it doesn't mean we want to stay away forever or alternatively, that we aren't happy living in our new country.

But it does mean we listen, we watch, we observe. We don't take things for granted. We don't accept things just because they are, because they always have been. It also means we have to learn to be tactful, to choose when and where to express our opinions and not to dwell on the negative, the frustrating, the different.

There are tons of things I love about Sweden and I will add to the list, but for starters I'm going to quote two other bloggers-

When daddies take care of kids.

Ten reasons why I am glad I will be in Sweden and not in the USA in 2009.