Saturday, December 22, 2012

Swedish Christmas Carols

While I still associate most Swedish Christmases with the Absolute Christmas soundtrack (no this is not a type of vodka, but rather an oldschool series of 'mix-Cd's' sold at gas stations and released semiannually, well not the Christmas one, but Absolute top hits 2012 etc), the day of CD collections is over and there are still a lot of classical Swedish Christmas songs that are well worth enjoying.

If you are curious, the Absolute Christmas contains everything from Wham's Last Christmas, Abba's Happy New Year and Harry Belefonte.

But some classics are this one here:

Nu är det jul igen! The lyrics are: Now it is Christmas again, Now it is Christmas again, and it will go on until Easter, but that isn't true, that isn't true because in the middle is Lent.

It works better in Swedish


All good Swedish holidays include the drinking of the snaaps. But before there is the drinking of the snaaps there must be singing. At Christmas you sing this one:

Hej tomtegubbar

The translation is: Hello Santas bang your glasses and let us merry be! Hey Santas bang your glasses and let us merry be! A little while, we will live here, with lots of effort and trouble. Hello Santas bang your glasses and let us merry be!


And if my first paragraph just left you nostalgic for Wham.... there is always this:


4 comments:

  1. As funny as 'bang your glasses' sounds, it really should be 'fill your glasses'. “slå i” = poor (into), fill.

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  2. haha, that is a shame... ah well! skål!

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  3. Why are you spelling snaps "snaaps"? Makes no sense in Swedish or English to spell it that way??

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  4. Because I am a terrible speller--- and because I am trying to write it in a Swenglish way. Most of this blog makes no sense, so thanks for reading anyway.

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