Out with the old...

The last evening in April is traditionally celebrated with bonfires all over Sweden. This tradition dates back to long before Christian times. The purpose was to dispose of the old to make room for the new. When the Christians adopted the tradition, it became in honor of Saint Valborg, famous for persecuting witches. The religious aspects of this occasion have disappeared now, and it's all about burning the debris from your garden in the biggest, baddest bonfire you can manage (and getting drunk).

Some may argue that getting drunk is an integral part of any Swedish social occasion, but this particular night is widely known as the start of the public drunk and disorderly season for Swedish youth. Honestly, I never knew it had seasons, but I heard this on the news.

We were invited to celebrate Valborg with the same people with whom we'd spent New Year's and Halloween. We contributed a huge pile of branches--the result of removing about a half dozen dead or diseased ash trees this winter. It was a bad winter for forestry because of all the snow, but my husband and our forest caretaker did get in a few days of tree removal. This pile would have been quite sufficient for a large bonfire on its own, but we loaded it into a truck and added it to the giant pile.

It rained much of the day, so the guys put up a party tent. I've already learned that with enough lighter fluid and beer, men can set fire to anything, so it was not a problem that the wood was wet. We lit the fire around sunset. The bonfire promptly got too hot for anyone to get near it, so everyone grilled the hot dogs or hamburgers that they'd brought with them on a separate grill. This particular evening was super windy, but after the snowy winter, the risk for the fire spreading was low. They did have a garden hose at the ready just in case. Now a garden hose seems dreadfully inadequate with a fire the size of a house and strong winds, but what would I know. They never did need the garden hose. This type of thing still makes the Californian in me quite nervous, so I was glad that this year the bonfire wasn't at our place.

I brought marshmallows, so I showed the kids the finer points of grilling marshmallows and made S'mores for the adults. I was shocked to see an 8 year old who didn't know that you could blow out a marshmallow that caught on fire, or eat the cooked part off of it and put the center back over the fire. He was so thrilled to learn this that he proudly demonstrated it several times.

When it got too late for the kids, the wives took them home, and some of the men stayed to make sure the fire burned down safely. Now it will probably take days for the thing to burn out entirely, but they spent the wee hours drinking beer and watching the fire from a wood-fired hot tub.