Nameday

Today is my name day according to the Norwegian calendar. Unfortunately this has no significance in Norway, so no congrats and strawberry cake awaits me.

In Sweden, however, this is a pretty big thing. According to what I can gather from Wikipedia (...) the reason for this is that the Christian church wanted to celebrate the christianing, rather than the day you were born into sin... In Sweden these names were introduced into the almanac in 1747, and they seem to think this is a big deal. In Norway, however, this was only halfheartedly introduced in 1988. The Swedes have a head start over the pagan Norwegians. You'd think, though, that since I'm in Sweden this would be a great opportunity to celebrate shamelessly - but no: Benjamin isn't on August 30 here, rather on December 28. Bummer.