Exactly one year and one week ago, on Walpurgis Night, me, my dad and some friends of his put on our lumberjack boots, grabbed a bottle of nice champagne and trekked out into the forest to spread my mum’s ashes by a tarn. Later we made her favorite fancy dinner and while my dad drank lots of whiskey and tried to convince us that all girls should carry knives we watched the fires light up around the lake outside our window. That’s what people do every year on Walpurgis Night in Sweden. They drink lots of whiskey and light fires. (They don’t generally bury their mothers though. That was just us.)The purpose of the fires is the usual stuff. You know, scaring off witches and so on. That’s why they’re usually lit somewhere close to the churches. But the Christians aren’t the only ones making use of the night. When Amy in New York was going on about feeling pagan, it was eerily well-timed because Walpurgis is one of the most important satanic nights of the year. If you've got a big sacrifice you've been meaning to do, this is the time to do it.Anyways, that’s why the Christians light fires, and that’s why you’re dragged out in the freezing cold to watch them with your parents. It's a solidly observed tradition, too, I think because of the dual appeal to Northern Europe's rival Christian and Black Metal populations. Even if scaring off the witches isn’t as popular as, say, putting up a Christmas tree, it’s at least as common as Easter eggs or August crawfish. After the fires go out everyone goes home to get shitfaced. May 1 is one of the most sacred holidays in Sweden and no one is a allowed to work, so it works out very well in the end. This year’s Mayday demonstrations were even more hardcore than usual, and there was even a group of diehards rallying for the liberation of North Korea. That's what the picture up top is of. They wanted to free this Communist paradise from the oppressive American intruders. I had no idea you all had even invaded them. That pretty much sums up Swedish Walpurgis: Satanism and Communism in happy conjunction, just like you yanks always suspected.