A Finnish Easter Weekend

Easter in Finland means everything closes for 4 days (from Good Friday to Easter Monday) and half the population leaves town for cabins, relatives, spas or other holiday fun. The remaining folks go to one or more of a myriad option of Holy Week worship services.

We, in our typical "got the holidays all wrong" experience in Finland, are home for the holiday while everyone else is gone, but are leaving town next Wednesday for our own "escape the rain, gray and melting snow" holiday in Barcelona with my dear friend Dawn and her two kids.

Here's how our long Easter weekend went:

Thursday -
After school Kalee opened the Easter package from Grandma Ann to find some Dove dark chocolate eggs (Kalee's favorite), a note that said this was just a little something "eggstra" for Easter (eggstra is now Kalee's favorite word), and a little thing called a "Wonder Knitter" with which Kalee can knit bracelets, necklaces, and other long thing things. She loves it!

Friday - Daddy made biscuits for breakfast. Usually this is a sign that it is Saturday so it got us all off to a confusing start. The day was beautiful, clear, sunny and up to 48 F by mid-day. We got Kalee suited up (to stay somewhat dry) and walked over to the park to play on the playground. The playground is much more accessible now that there is only about 8 inches of snow left on the ground. Last time we were at this particular park there was at least 2 feet of snow, it was bitterly cold and we were ice skating. Much more pleasant this time, though Kalee wished we could skate.

She mastered crossing this part of the playground even though she was scared to try. Once she did it once she kept doing it over and over and over.
On the way home we visited the last vestiges of the cave Kalee and Charles made three weeks ago.
In the afternoon we colored Easter eggs.


The tulips are from our guest, Suzelle. The box of grass Kalee grew at school (a traditional Finnish Easter project). Later we started watching E.T.! Such a great movie. Kalee is loving it.

Saturday - Kalee popped awake at 6:15 with the sun. I am counting the days (and hoping there are not too many) until the sun wakes up early enough that Kalee will go back to sleep after it has awoken her. We went to our English play group in the morning (so nice to have English speaking kids and moms).

After Kalee went to bed I went off to the Kuokkalan Kirkka to sing with the Finnish Lutherans for their 10pm mass. The service starts with the lights dimmed and everything shrouded in black.

Within the first 5 minutes of the service the music changes mood, the lights come up, all the shrouds are removed and the celebration begins. I understood for the first time that all the Holy Week services combined are really one long ritual expression of death and rebirth. I know, I'm a little slow on these things sometimes. Not understanding the words helped me experience the ritual without my head getting in the way. The head, the intellect, rational discourse and skepticism are all great things, but it is good to set them aside on occasion for a different kind of experience.

Sunday - The Easter Bunny came! Kalee nearly exploded into our room saying the Easter Bunny had left little chocolate eggs all over the living room and kitchen! There was even one at the entrance to the lego-airport.
Charles made Sticky Buns for breakfast. Oh my goodness they were rich! Kalee could only eat half of hers, then asked for some regular cereal. So sensible. Charles and I each ate two of them. An hour later and I still only wanted to drink warm water to cleanse my mouth and body.

Kalee seemed to need some down-time after breakfast. She shed her PJs, crawled under her blanket with Brownie and stayed there for an hour. She choose this activity over going to the spa for swimming. She is in her tomb, perhaps, and will arise ... here she comes ... wrapped in a cape! Ahhhh, it is a fever, not the need for solitude. Bummer. (A little Tylenol did the trick.)

Charles made quiche for our Easter dinner and whole wheat crescent rolls from my childhood. Both were delicious.

Monday - Yes, the Finnish Easter Weekend just keeps going right through Monday. We had guests for dinner so spent the day cleaning and cooking. Entertaining in our apartment is a challenge. For example, we only have 4 chairs. With our 2 guests we needed to seat 5 so Kalee got to sit on swivel-y desk chair. It was a very nice evening and a nice ending to our long Easter weekend.

Tomorrow we head off to Barcelona where the forecast says it will be 63F and sunny all week.

Kuokkalan Kirkko

A new church opened in our neighborhood (Kuokkala) last Sunday. It is visually stunning from the outside and the photos of the inside in the newspaper intrigued me even more. We have heard this is the first new church building built in Finland for decades (I'll try to get more accurate information on that). Not surprising for a country where something like 80% of the population belong to the church but only 4% attend. In Finland this goes without saying, but most of you readers are not in Finland so I'll tell you this is a Lutheran church. It is nearly the only brand in Finland and it is the national church which can levy a 1% tax from its members.

Knowing I would understand hardly a word that was spoken, I went to the service this morning anyway. It was full to over-flowing with people of all ages. Spirits seemed high, as you would guess on the second Sunday in a new building. Perhaps a service that is mostly ritual, prayer and music is just the sort that can still be fulfilling despite a language barrier. I was already thinking that words wouldn't be all that important to me after a year and a half of 'un-programed' (silent) Quaker worship. Still, I was surprised to find myself teary-eyed in this service like I was for the first few months with the Quakers. Something in me has been hibernating since we last attended Meeting in mid December. Going to church was like the sun coming out and starting to warm up the ground.

It was the music, in part. The music drives the service. It tells you when to stand and when to sit, it bookends and weaves through the prayers, it gives emotion to the offering and communion. The music director is full of fabulous energy and made great, non-traditional musical selections. I knew right away that I wanted to join that choir and sing with that director. I spoke to her afterward and she enthusiastically welcomed me to sing with them, which I'll start doing in a couple weeks. She said they mostly sing from a song-book she published herself. The title, she said, translates roughly as "Singing for People Who Can't Sing." I love that attitude. And she had not one bit of hesitation about me not speaking Finnish.

More than the music, though, I think it was simply being in church. This went through my mind while walking home: we may not share the same beliefs, but we share a belief in church. I'm glad I can't really understand what is being said. I'm not sure I could sit through 90min of Lutheran theology every week. But to share in the ritual of going to church, of gathering with others in a worshipful attitude, this I love.

Now the pictures.
The preacher's eye view.

The parishioner's view. The whole interior is wood and cement with a bit of copper here and there. The chairs are the same pale birch as the walls and lattice ceiling with seats covered in cream/grey wool felt. If you look closely at the bubbles at the front you can see a few metallic outlines of christian symbols (a big Jesus, dove, wine chalice, and some others).

Outside back. The brown stuff that looks like old wood is copper. Imagine it green some day. And the black shingles are slate.
Front.
Bell tower (and a really big pile of snow).