We’re just a few days away from Easter for many people around the world.
For kids in Finland and Sweden, the Thursday before Easter is itself a pretty important time: it’s when they turn themselves into witches!
To put this day into the broader sequence of events: the Thursday before Easter is when Jesus was betrayed and sentenced to be crucified, and when he had the Last Supper with his disciples.
In some traditions, this pivotal moment in Christianity, right before the Savior’s death and resurrection, was also the moment when all the evil forces of the world were free to go about their unholy business.
In the 1600s and 1700s, many people in Sweden were terrified of witches, who they thought would fly on this Thursday to a place called Mount Blåkulla to consort with the devil.
To protect themselves, they would keep the witches from flying to their evil by hiding brooms, rakes, shovels and livestock (because they thought the witches could either steal the milk or ride them through the air).
And if any witches should make it to the skies after all that, people could scare them away by lighting bonfires and either shooting firearms or pulling those party favors known as crackers, the ones that give off the loud pop.
The witch hysteria eventually faded out, and the idea of witches going out on the Thursday before Easter turned into a tradition for kids; they would go door to door in their witch costumes to receive little candies, sort of like Halloween trick or treating here in the US.
People in Finland took up the Easter witch custom as well, and combined it with an Orthodox tradition of blessing farms and livestock.
It hasn’t spread to this part of the world yet, but I may keep a bag of chocolates handy today just in case some costumed witches happen to drop by.
They can go a long way on broomsticks, after all!
Today in 1967, the last episode of the sitcom Gilligan’s Island.
Not long after its first episode, the network told creator Sherwood Schwartz that the Coast Guard had been getting telegrams from Americans about the show.
They demanded to know why the US government wasn’t rescuing these poor people from this deserted island!
Hopefully those viewers caught on by the time the Harlem Globetrotters visited the castaways.
Easter in Sweden comes in many shapes and forms. But there’s no getting around the eggs (or the witches). (Sweden.se)
Little witches in Finland cast good spells before Easter (Seattle Times)
‘Gilligan’s Island’: Secrets From the Set, Including Who Thought the Show ‘Would Never Be Picked Up’ (Yahoo!)
