In a cemetery at once

There's more graffiti here than I'd thought there'd be. Oddly, not a single smashed pumpkin to be seen.

What we had here in Sweden this weekend was the age-old tradition of All Saints' Day being overlapped by Sweden's semi-recent acceptance of celebrating Halloween. All Saints is a religious day set aside to remember and honor friends and family that have passed away. Families assemble in front of graves and stare down simultaneously in silence; each grave that is visited receives a candle. The visual outcome of this was, to me, quite somber and special.

My internet comrade Amy Lou recently blogged about the half-panned acceptance Halloween gets here. She does a great job at explaining why she thinks Sweden could really use a more strategically planned and executed Halloween, say like, we have in America. Now, I'm not here to bring American traditions abroad, but when a "holiday" is struggling to keep it's head above the bobbing apples it can make someone like me, who has such a high standard for Halloween activities, sad. In the grocery stores I've seen temporary displays of Halloween goods for sale; a sort of one-stop-shop for everything you'd really need to get by. Sales appear to be slow. In the produce section there was a pile of about eight smallish pumpkins on the floor underneath the tomatoes. I grabbed three tomatoes because there was cooking to do. This meager attempt at promoting Halloween didn't put me in the mood to start up my own Punk Rock Pumpkin Carving Contest as my friends back home annually hold.

But this isn't back home! And I promise I won't compare the States to Sweden in every blog from here on out (just sometimes!). It's just that the differences are quite immense as you can imagine. American Halloween aside, this weekend's autumn festivities, no matter how much they contradicted each other in the aspects of seriousness, set a mark for what I can expect from this country. It seems to me there's incredibly strong traditions peppered with new and open ideas, whether it's for the kids or just for even more diversity.

After a day of browsing around some shops we walked home instead of taking the bus in order to stroll through the cemetery. There was a fog that floated down to about the tree line. A sea of candles shimmied in the slight breeze while families pushing strollers and wheelchairs rolled up and down the manicured rows of graves. It was odd to see so many people in a cemetery at once. It looked more like a flea market at first with people spread out, walking different directions. Souls in limbo, as it's the only way I can think to describe the dead that had to be bearing witness to all of this, must've been satisfied. Everyone so somber, missing their loved ones, knowing the winter is here.