After nearly a month of waiting, Christmas Eve finally arrives — the height of the celebration in Sweden. Work is at an end, schoolchildren are on holiday and the Christmas preparations are complete.
The Swedish New Year often coincides with a bout of ice-cold weather. Temperatures, which tend to hover frustratingly around freezing point over Christmas, at least in the south, gradually drop, and by midnight you can see shivering Swedes, up to their knees in heavy snow, toasting one another in champagne and firing off rockets.