Easter (and the decline of the Church) in Sweden

It's Easter!

Biking back from SLU today I had to take great care in not mowing down vast hoards of children dressed thusly:

Note that I wasn't the one who took pictures of these pink-cheek-painted, freckle be-daubed, headscarfed children because I was not brave enough to dash out to any of their parents and beg to photograph their kids so images could be posted across the web on this unknown American's blog.

In the olden days, Swedes believed Easter was witches time. On the Thursday before Easter, witches were supposed to have flown off to Blåkulla, Blue Mountain, to meet with the Devil. Now, little kids dress up as witches and walk around town knocking on people's doors, taking along their painted eggs and handmade cards to trade for sweets.

You also see a lot of these in windows and shops:

They're decorations derived from a somewhat disturbing tradition that the Swedes had for a while. In the past, kids used to whip each other with birch switches to remind one another of the pain Jesus suffered (although I personally don't believe this is the lesson most kids took from such an activity).

This is, for most Swedes, a cultural holiday as opposed to a religious one. This brings me to the country's religious history, which I actually find very interesting.

Prior to the 11th C. Swedes believed in Norse paganism and worshipped the Æsir gods. Their pagan stronghold was actually centered in Uppsala at the Temple in Uppsala. Cool, no? I almost can't believe I'm living in a place with so much history!

With the Christianization of Sweden in the 11th C. however, laws were passed that forbade the worship of any other god into the late 1800s. Then in the 1530s after the Protestant Reformation the church and state were separated and the Roman Catholic bishops were stripped of their power. This led to the rise of Lutheranism (note that I'm including these links because I absolutely cannot keep divisions of Christianity straight so I figured this would be helpful to any readers). Between then and the 18th C. non-Lutherans who played a large role in the economy's growth (Wikipedia says: Calvinist Dutchmen, the Moravian Church and Walloons or French Huguenots from Belgium) were allowed to live and practice in Sweden as long as they kept a low religious profile. Until 1860 it was illegal for Lutheran Swedes to convert to any other religion.

The 1800s began with the introduction of free churches and ended with the introduction of secularism, which led many Swedes to distance themselves from Church rituals. Finally in 1951 it became legal for Swedes to withdraw from the Church and remain so without being forced to enter another denomination. In a welcome meeting SLU held for us, we also learned that when this law was formed, 20% of Swedes withdrew from the Church.

In 2008, 72.9% of Swedes were still part of the Church of Sweden. Apparently, this number has been declining by 1% for the past 20 years, with Church services attracting less than 10% of the population. Free churches though, have a higher attendance rate.

Many Swedes are still considered part of the Church because up until 1996 all children were automatically included in the system if one parent was. After 1996 however, only children who are christened would be considered members of the Church. My Swedish buddy, Matilda, told me others remain members of the Church because sometimes complications with funeral services in churches can arise if the deceased was not a member.