1. - and I do mean #1 - Listening to a men's chorus at church sing Finlandia hymni - the national anthem. Americans (and others) might be familiar with this song as the hymn Be Still, My Soul. But it has different lyrics for the national anthem and it was so cool to sit there in church and listen to it!
2. Lighting two blue and white candles in the window at 6pm. It's tradition. We did this at a friend's house.
3. Watching the reception at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki on TV. For a few hours, the President and his wife shake the hands of notable people in Finland in a seemingly never-ending reception line. Different people are invited each year. Tonight, we sat through probably 45 minutes of smiling and handshaking and there was no end in sight. The best part was at the beginning when WW2 veterans were going through the reception line.
4. Admiring the Finnish flags everywhere. The one at our building is visible from our bedroom window and it's kind of neat to see it flapping away in the wind.
5. Eating my fill of pätkis. These are my new favorite candy. They're the closest thing to York Peppermint Patties I've ever found outside of the US...and they might just be better. I don't know if this is related to Independence Day, but they weren't on my radar at all until someone brought some into work this week and then we had them at our friend's house tonight. They are made by Fazer (a famous Finnish candy company), so maybe there is a connection.
6. Learning more about the Finnish sense of nationalism - the independence they achieved in 1917 and then their experiences during WW2, which were broken up into a few smaller regional wars. There is also the fact that they had a civil war just after independence - recent enough to be almost in living memory. We were talking with a Mormon Finn who served his 2-year mission in Russia (the country Finland most recently gained its independence from), and for my own sake I was trying to imagine what it would feel like to be a Finn and be called on a mission to Russia in the 90s. Maybe to be an American and be called on a mission to Britain in the 1850s? Not a perfect analogy, but it helped adjust my perspective a little.
All in all, it was a great first Finnish Independence Day!
