Finnish witches celebrate Easter

Easter traditions in Finland mix religious references with customs related to the long-awaited arrival of spring.

Youngsters dress up as witches

In the most popular family tradition, young children (especially girls) dress up as Easter witches, donning colourful old clothes and painting freckles on their faces and carrying willow twigs decorated with feathers they go from house to house.

When the front door is opened they say Virvon, varvon, tuoreeks terveeks, tulevaks vuodeks; vitsa sulle, palkka mulle! (I wave a twig for a fresh and healthy year ahead; a twig for you, a treat for me!).

In return they expect and normally receive small chocolate Easter eggs, a little bit of money or some other appropriate gift, a bit like the tradition of trick or treat at Halloween.

Mixture of traditions

It appears that this tradition mixes two older beliefs, one a Russian Orthodox ritual where birch twigs originally represented the palms laid down when Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and the other based on a Swedish and Western Finnish tradition in which children made fun of earlier fears that evil witches could be about on Easter Saturday.

Some Finnish children also place birch twigs in vases of water, and wait for buds to appear symbolising the return of spring.