Advent Tide in Sweden I : Tjuvarnas jul

In the Nordic countries Advent is still much celebrated . Although the reformation tried to rid Swedes of all Catholic habits, many of them remain, like celebrating Advent. It's not celebrated with much fasting, unfortunately for the public health. People tend to eat "Christmas Tables", ( i.e. the special Christmas dishes which resemble in much the food starving vikings longed for duríng the Advent lent-fat, lard, sugar, cream and salt are the main ingredients) for more than a month before Christmas, instead.

However, there are more to Advent in Sweden than eating an excess of calories in mediaeval food. One of the most popular is the Advent calendar on Swedish TV, a serial in 24 episodes guiding families to Christmas eve with some "Chritsmassy" story. Normally people love to hate, and find faults with it, but this year an unanimous praise is raised to the Advent calendar. Dorothea doesn't beg to differ. It is lovely in every respect.

The petty thief Kurre goes straight and gets hired as a Department Store Santa the weeks before Christmas

The story is set in early 20th C Sweden and the main characters are thieves in the "Klappsnappar-gang"(Christmas presents nickers). The petty thief Kurre is found by his daughter Charlie, a girl resembling Anne of Green Gables, Oliver Twist and the female Astrid Lindgren characters including Brenda helping Grandmother, Pippi Longstocking and Lotta on Troublemaker's Street. 

Charlie is straight forward and helps her father to live a straight life. She has already saved the small town from the gangster queen, the evil and tight fisted Madame Bofvén, and I bet she also will conquer the greedy department store owner, simply called "Direktörskan" (the Managing Directoress). A woman cut out from the same mold as Cruella Deville and Miranda Priestley from "The Devil Wears Prada".

The Policemen Jönsson and Jansson on either side of the Chief Inspector Lönnroth. Jönsson and Jansson are comical twin characters of Laurel and Hardy and makes life rather easy for the thieves in the small town

Apart from Charlie and the two horrible main villains in the story, there are several other strong female characters in the story; Madame Shadow-one of the thieves and Miss Gerda, the neighbour who has a cruch on Kurre, and Kurre has the same for her, at the same time Charlie has chosen her as her mother, since her first mother "is an angel".

The characters are Dickensian, the snow and cold is real and the story is heart warming. Most of my readers doesn't live in Sweden, and you probably don't know much Swedish, but you can get a hint of this Advent tradition and lovely story here.