I was bored, 'kay? But this is true, as far as I know. I think I should know, because I live in Sweden.

Annika and Eljas aren't my Oc:s, I'm just borrowing them from Memento Mori-Pontifex Mortis. Without asking… I was in a hurry, so I winged it and hoped she wouldn't mind.

Hetalia doesn't belong to me, either. If it did, my country would be featured more.

Tino stared intensively at the bow in front of his eyes, ever so carefully tugging at it to get it straight. "Why is this so difficult?" he groaned, glaring at the bow as though it had greatly offended him personally.

"It's okay, mamma." his daughter lisped. "It's not that big of a deal."

"Are we done yet? I want to go now~" her twin brother agreed, accidentally smearing some of the bright red makeup on his cheeks. "The candy is going to be taken otherwise."

"It's not about the candy. Don't you two know what Easter is about?" Peter grinned in a bossy older-brother kind of way. "It's about witches. We dress up like this to scare them away, right?" he looked at Tino for confirmation.

Tino didn't answer straight away, he first looked at his children, all three dressed up in brightly coloured and mismatched clothes. The two boys were påskgubbar, complete with funny hats and drawn-on beards. Although, Eljas hadn't been able to make up his mind, therefore he had insisted on wearing a scarf around his head, an apron tied over the purple jacket and he had had his cheeks painted red with black dots to resemble freckles. Meanwhile, Annika made a very pretty påskkärring in her flowered skirt and a stripy bandana forced down on the neatly braided hair. Even Tino had dressed up, having put colourful feathers in his unruly blonde hair, to resemble a påskris. In reality, a påskris was a batch of birch-branches with feathers tied to them.

"That's right, sweetie." Tino finally said with a dreamy face. "But it's still not all there is. I'll tell you." he sat down, gesturing to the children to do the same.

"Yes, please!" Eljas hurried to sit down on Tino's right.

"Tell us, mum! Tell us!" eagerly, Annika took the place on Tino's other side, which she didn't know what it was called.

"You know about Jesus, right?"

"Sure we do!" Peter literally threw himself down on the floor. "He was a prophet, even though many believed him to be the son of God. In the end, he was killed because the Romans didn't like that a lot of people listened to what Jesus had to say."

"Yes! And on the third day after his death, Jesus came back from the grave." Annika giggled, tugging slightly on her braid.

"True. That's why we celebrate Easter here in Sweden. But, as you know, we also eat a whole lot of eggs." Tino laughed at Annika's disgusted frown. "That's because, back when Sweden was catholic, the people went through a sort of cleansing in the beginning of spring. When that was over, the hens had just started laying eggs again, making them have a lot of eggs to eat. There were so many eggs they were even used in different games, and given away as gifts, dyed with onion peals, often with something written on them."

"U-huh. But what about the witches? Where do they fit into all this?" Eljas piped up, nervously looking for any stray witches.

"The witches worked for hin håle, the Devil. Since he's God's sworn enemy, he was at his most powerful at the day Jesus died. On this very day. Tonight, the witches will fly to Blåkulla to dance and party with him. If you want to see them, you can climb up on a roof as the sun rises, and look at the sky through a strainer. If you're lucky, you'll see them fly past. The people were, of course, frightened of the Devil and his followers, so they tried to scare them away by dressing up like witches and shooting guns up in the air. We don't use guns anymore, instead, we shoot fireworks. But the general idea is still the same."

"So… It's like Halloween? The goal is to scare something bad away…?"

"You could say that, yes. Now, hurry up, or all the candy will be taken by the other little witches out there."

"That's right. I forgot." with amazing speed, Eljas was by the door, waiting for his siblings to follow his example. "Hurry up, you two. My -I mean our- candy await!"

This is what I can remember about the Swedish Easter traditions. Shame on me for forgetting things I've done since I was little. I haven't been a påskärring in many years, though... When you've reached thirteen, you've grown too old to do it. Unless you have a younger sibling. Then it's still fine. The same goes for Halloween.