Virvonta
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Virvonta
The virvonta or virpominen (meaning the act of refreshment, or of wishing) is performed by Finnish children on Palm Sunday to wish well to the households. In modern times, children dress as witches and knock at neighbours' doors while carrying salix tree branches ( pussy willow), often decorated with colourful feathers. If accepted, they pronounce a blessing rhyme and leave a branch as gift, while receiving sweets in return. The Swedish-speaking minority, especially in Ostrobothnia, may instead celebrate the Saturday before Easter. This is not related to Christian tradition but Western european tradition of cattle and harvest magic that was practiced in different places. History The tradition has various pagan and Christian origins: Nordic spring traditions to dispel bad spirits and wish a good harvest season, as well as the Christian ritual of the palms. In Finland, the Orthodox tradition involves children giving blessing with branches distributed at church celebration; t ...
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Easter Traditions
Since its origins, Easter has been a time of celebration and feasting and many traditional Easter games and customs developed, such as egg rolling, egg tapping, pace egging, cascarones or confetti eggs and egg decorating. Today Easter is commercially important, seeing wide sales of greeting cards and confectionery such as chocolate Easter eggs as well as other Easter food such as turkey. Even many non-Christians celebrate these features of the holiday while ignoring the religious aspects. Games There are a large number of traditional Easter games and customs in the Christian world. Many of these games incorporate Easter eggs. Although adopted into the Christian tradition of Easter, these games are probably based in ancient fertility cultsVenetia Newall (1971) ''An Egg at Easter: A Folklore Study'', p. 321 (this is a classic example of syncretism). Of these the most well known, widespread and popular until the modern times are the egg rolling, egg hunt, egg tapping, and egg ...
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Trick-or-treating
Trick-or-treating is a traditional Halloween custom for children and adults in some countries. During the evening of Halloween, on October 31, people in costumes travel from house to house, asking for treats with the phrase "trick or treat". The "treat" is some form of confectionery, usually candy/sweets, although in some cultures money is given instead. The "trick" refers to a threat, usually idle, to perform mischief on the resident(s) or their property if no treat is given. Some people signal that they are willing to hand out treats by putting up Halloween decorations outside their doors; houses may also leave their porch lights on as a universal indicator that they have candy; some simply leave treats available on their porches for the children to take freely, on the honor system. The history of trick-or-treating traces back to Scotland and Ireland, where the tradition of guising, going house to house at Halloween and putting on a small performance to be rewarded with food o ...
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Easter Witch Sk12 Pääsiäisnoita C
Easter,Traditional names for the feast in English are "Easter Day", as in the '' Book of Common Prayer''; "Easter Sunday", used by James Ussher''The Whole Works of the Most Rev. James Ussher, Volume 4'') and Samuel Pepys''The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Volume 2'') as well as the single word "Easter" in books printed i157515841586 also called Pascha ( Aramaic, Greek, Latin) or Resurrection Sunday, is a Christian festival and cultural holiday commemorating the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, described in the New Testament as having occurred on the third day of his burial following his crucifixion by the Romans at Calvary . It is the culmination of the Passion of Jesus Christ, preceded by Lent (or Great Lent), a 40-day period of fasting, prayer, and penance. Easter-observing Christians commonly refer to the week before Easter as Holy Week, which in Western Christianity begins on Palm Sunday (marking the entrance of Jesus in Jerusalem), includes Spy Wednesday (on ...
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Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland across Estonia to the south. Finland covers an area of with a population of 5.6 million. Helsinki is the capital and largest city, forming a larger metropolitan area with the neighbouring cities of Espoo, Kauniainen, and Vantaa. The vast majority of the population are ethnic Finns. Finnish, alongside Swedish, are the official languages. Swedish is the native language of 5.2% of the population. Finland's climate varies from humid continental in the south to the boreal in the north. The land cover is primarily a boreal forest biome, with more than 180,000 recorded lakes. Finland was first inhabited around 9000 BC after the Last Glacial Period. The Stone Age introduced several differ ...
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Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday is a Christian moveable feast that falls on the Sunday before Easter. The feast commemorates Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, an event mentioned in each of the four canonical Gospels. Palm Sunday marks the first day of Holy Week. For adherents of mainstream Christianity, it is the last week of the Christian solemn season of Lent that precedes the arrival of Eastertide. In most liturgical churches, Palm Sunday is celebrated by the blessing and distribution of palm branches (or the branches of other native trees), representing the palm branches which the crowd scattered in front of Christ as he rode into Jerusalem; these palms are sometimes woven into crosses. The difficulty of procuring palms in unfavorable climates led to their substitution with branches of native trees, including box, olive, willow, and yew. The Sunday was often named after these substitute trees, as in Yew Sunday, or by the general term Branch Sunday. In Syriac Christianity it is often c ...
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Pussy Willow
Pussy willow is a name given to many of the smaller species of the genus ''Salix'' (willows and sallows) when their furry catkins are young in early spring. These species include (among many others): *Goat willow or goat sallow ('' Salix caprea''), a small tree native to northern Europe and northwest Asia. *Grey willow or grey sallow ('' Salix cinerea''), a small tree native to northern Europe. *American pussy willow (''Salix discolor''), native to northern North America. Before the male catkins of these species come into full flower they are covered in fine, greyish fur, leading to a fancied likeness to tiny cats, also known as “pussies”. The catkins appear long before the leaves, and are one of the earliest signs of spring. At other times of year trees of most of these species are usually known by their ordinary names. Cultural traditions Asia The many buds of the pussy willow make it a favourite flower for Chinese New Year. The fluffy white blossoms of the pussy willow ...
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Swedish-speaking Population Of Finland
The Swedish-speaking population of Finland (whose members are called by many names; fi, suomenruotsalainen) can be used as an attribute., group=Note—see #Terminology, below; sv, finlandssvenskar; fi, suomenruotsalaiset) is a linguistic minority in Finland. They maintain a strong identity and are seen either as a separate cultural or ethnic group, while still being considered ethnic Finns, or as a distinct nationality. They speak Finland Swedish, which encompasses both a standard language and distinct dialects that are mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible with the Swedish dialects, dialects spoken in Sweden and, to a lesser extent, other Scandinavian languages. According to Statistics Finland, Swedish is the first language, mother tongue of about 260,000 people in mainland Finland and of about 26,000 people in Åland, a self-governing archipelago off the west coast of Finland, where Swedish speakers constitute a majority. Swedish-speakers comprise 5.2% of the total ...
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Ostrobothnia (region)
Ostrobothnia ( sv, Österbotten; fi, Pohjanmaa) is a region in western Finland. It borders the regions of Central Ostrobothnia, South Ostrobothnia, and Satakunta. It is one of four regions considered modern-day Ostrobothnia, hence also referred to as Coastal Ostrobothnia to avoid confusion. Ostrobothnia is one of two Finnish regions with a Swedish-speaking majority (the other being the constitutionally monolingual province of Åland); Swedish-speakers make up 51.2% of the total population. The region contains thirteen bilingual municipalities and one that is exclusively Finnish-speaking. The capital of Vaasa is predominantly inhabited by Finnish speakers, whereas smaller towns and rural areas are generally dominated by the Swedish language. The three municipalities with the largest number of Swedish speakers are Korsholm, Jakobstad and Pedersöre. Geographically, Ostrobothnia has little topographical relief, because it is mostly former seafloor brought to surface by post-glac ...
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Juha Vuorinen
Juha Tapio Vuorinen (born 31 March 1967) is a Finnish writer, columnist and radio personality. He is best known for his five-volume book series ''The Hangover Diaries'', particularly the first volume ''Totally Smashed!'' (in Finnish ''Juoppohullun päiväkirja''). Since 1983, Vuorinen had been working as a reporter for radio and television, a director, a screenwriter and a producer. Career Radio At the age of 16, Vuorinen had his first radio show for the show ''Ocsid''. At the beginning of 2013, Vuorinen returned to the ''Aamulypsy'' show for Radio Suomipop. He also had the radio columns "Vuorissaarna" ("Vuorinen's Preaching") ja "Annos Andalusiasta" ("A Bit from Andalusia") for the same channel. Vuorinen became a panelist on the show '' Hyvät ja huonot uutiset'' on Nelonen in 2017. Writing Books In spring of 1998, Vuorinen was asked to write a comedy piece for the keskus.net portal. He had just done a radio show about Tarno Manni whose play ''Mielipuolen päiväkirja'' ("Diary ...
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Public Holidays In Finland
All official holidays in Finland are established by acts of Parliament. The official holidays can be divided into Christian and non-Christian holidays. The main Christian holidays are Christmas, New Year's Day, Epiphany, Easter, Ascension day, Pentecost, Midsummer Day, and All Saints' Day. The non-Christian holidays are May Day and the Independence Day of Finland. In addition to this all Sundays are official holidays but they are not as important as the special holidays. The names of the Sundays follow the liturgical calendar and they can be categorized as Christian holidays. When, in the late 1960s, the standard working week in Finland was reduced to 40 hours by an act of Parliament, it also meant that all Saturdays became a sort of ''de facto'' public holidays, though not ''official'' ones. Easter Sunday and Pentecost are Sundays that form part of a ''main'' holiday and they are preceded by a kind of ''special'' Saturdays. Several Christian holidays traditionally falling on wo ...
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Religion In Finland
Finland is a predominantly Christian nation where 66.6% of the Finnish population of 5.5 million are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (Protestant), 30.6% are unaffiliated, 1.1% are Orthodox Christians, 0.9% are other Christians and 0.8% follow other religions like Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, folk religion etc. These statistics do not include, for example, asylum seekers who have not been granted a permanent residence permit. There are two national churches (as opposed to ''state'' churches): the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (Protestant), which is the primary religion representing 66.6% of the population by the end of 2021, and the Finnish Orthodox Church, to which about 1.1% of the population belongs. Those who officially belong to one of the two national churches have part of their taxes turned over to their respective church. There are also approximately 45,000 followers of Pentecostal Christianity, and more than 12,000 Catholic Chr ...
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