Happy St. Urho's Day

A while ago, a report aired on the CBS television show "60 Minutes" that can only be described as erroneous. In a segment on the recently discovered country of Finland, the reporter Morley Safer portrayed the Finns, who are the previously unknown inhabitants of that country, as a lugubrious and melancholy people prone to alcoholism and dancing the tango. I would like to correct that impression. The Finns, as I know them, are a lugubrious and melancholy people prone to alcoholism who think they are dancing the tango. This was made evident by several clips on the program that showed people tripping, albeit in a nicely melancholy way, while trying keep their tango partners from falling over. The Finns make great music, furniture, and cell phones, but you'll never see a Fred Astair dance out of their midst.

I grew up Finnish-American, which was convenient because I was born that way, and do believe I know something of the national psyche. Even though I have never been to Finland, where vowels outnumber people two-to-one, I have many relatives whom I have been able to observe over the years. They are hard-working, resilient lot, not without a sense of humor, who get slightly tipsy only during the festive period from Easter to Christmas. And it is true that the Finns are melancholy, although one could make the argument that any country plunged into darkness for six months a year is bound to produce a people whose idea of fun is to watch a lake freeze. In the dark.

The tango
Still, why the tango? Maybe because it's just a bit more fun than watching a lake freeze. Mr. Safer had no real answer, not that he expected one. My personal theory is this: in Finland, where reindeer outnumber vowels two-to-one, you have a country which has discovered approximately 7,000 ways to prepare herring; in which brightly dressed, short people called Laplanders traverse the Arctic Circle in search of new words for "snow"; and where the populace's idea of going south for the winter involves residency permits for Latvia. Indeed, why not the tango?

Of course, the Finns do know how to have fun in other ways, something I hope Mr. Safer will note when he returns for the second installment of his report, tentatively titled "Everything But the Kitchen Helsinki." Take the famous saunas, for instance. This is where you get naked with complete strangers and sweat a lot, and then, instead of watching a lake freeze, jump into it, which may be fun but is not a user-friendly experience for certain male extremities.

St. Urho
For another example of Finnish fun, March 16th marked the extremely important Finnish holiday, St. Urho's Day, which has never been heard of in Finland.

The reason St. Urho's Day has never been heard of in Finland is that it is an entirely made up holiday--not unlike every other holiday, obviously.

Apparently, in the 1950s a Finnish-American department store manager in a town called, wishfully one thinks, Virginia, Minnesota had a hard time getting excited about his Irish employees' upcoming St. Patrick's Day festivities. In order to avoid their fun, he created a story about a national hero of his own country named St. Urho, who was every bit as neurotic as St. Patrick. His legend contended that a plague of grasshoppers had once threatened the vineyards of ancient Finland, a situation dire and immediate, and St. Urho saved the grape crop by driving the grasshoppers out of the country. To this day, the made-up legend states, on the saint's feast day of March 16th women and children dress in purple and green and gather around the lakes of Finland to chant St. Urho's message: "Heinasirkka, heinasirkka, mene taalta hiiteen," which translates to "Grasshopper, grasshopper go away." Presumably, the men are elsewhere tending to grape-juice by-products, wondering why their families are shouting at lakes.

In an ironic twist, the St. Patrick's Day revelers, always eager to add another saint to the calendar, helped their manager celebrate the fictitious event, thus destroying his Lutheran determination to avoid fun.

The holiday grew wildly from there, and today most Finnish-Americans have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about.

Pulla
Which doesn't mean the holiday isn't celebrated, albeit in a herringbone-in-cheek sort of way. We never celebrated it in my family, but we didn't tango either. We did, however, eat a wonderful sweet bread prepared by my father's Aunt Saimi, called "pulla." Yet, there is a down-side to Finnish cuisine. As St. Patrick's Day has its own green beer and corned beef, the Finns have their own St. Urho's Day dinner. It consists of, and this is authentic, fish stew, rye bread, hardtack, butter, and vegetable sticks.

After a meal like that, who could resist the tango?

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