Kekritär and the Forgotten Tradition Before Halloween: Kekri

Why did people go door to door dressed as dead ancestors threatening to break your stove or listen to trees creaking in the wind to tell the future? These are just some of the forgotten Finnish traditions before the modern day, commercial Halloween. 

In my childhood in the 90s and even in the 2000s dressing up for Halloween or celebrating Halloween wasn’t really a thing yet in Finland or at least it wasn’t as common as in America back then or the way it is here now, but if we go back far enough, like even a few hundred years, there actually was a similar tradition.

Kekritär coloring page

Kekri harvest festival

The biggest event of the agricultural year in pre-Christian times was a harvest festival called Kekri in the fall. Sometime between the end of September and beginning of November. The exact day might change based on when the harvesting and autumn plowing was done. The customs of Kekri would eventually mix in with the Christian All Saints Day and move to November 1st, but it was still the main holiday of the year in the 19th century, even bigger than Christmas.

Kekri was celebrated in honor of the god of cattle also called Kekri. It was the end of the harvesting year and a break before the new one. It was also a time to honor the deceased and treat them well, so that they would bring you good luck. It was forbidden to work because it might bother the deceased, so it was a free week for the servants, when they got their pay and could go home or go look for a new job for the next farming year. 

Posing with the Kekritär painting

Food was a big part of it and one of the rituals was to sacrifice a sheep for the god of cattle and cook the whole thing, bones and all, to make sure next year’s harvest would be successful. There was a lot of food, the preparations started the week prior. In the morning someone would light a branch of juniper and run around the house to get the smoke everywhere to get rid of rats and other pests. Food was kept on the table all day, and anyone visiting was welcome to come and eat. And some food had to be taken to the farm storehouses for the deceased, where their bodies were apparently kept before burying, to make peace with them and make them happy and prevent them from coming back to haunt the living, because the dead ancestors were thought to be moving around especially during the harvest festivities.

Sketch for my Kekritär painting

Kekritär and kekripukki

Young people would dress up as the deceased, risen up from the underworld, as kekripukki or kekritär and sing and go door to door like trick or treating for Halloween now, but instead of trick or treat they might say “köyri or oven”. Kekripukki would be wearing a mask and a fur coat inside out. The mask could be made up of birchbark, shears as a beak and spoons as antlers. Kekritär on the other hand would be wearing all white, even over their face like some kind of a veil or gauze or even just paper to hide their identity. Women might also dress up as men and men as women.

I made a watercolor painting of my version of Kekritär. I decided to kind of mix and match and take some liberties with my Kekritär painting, so she has the white clothes but also a skull with antlers and the veil is pretty see-through. Kekritär painting merch is available in my shop.

Kekritär merch

Early version of trick-or-treating

These were meant to be scary characters to scare the kids and make sure everyone behaved for the serious part of this occasion of remembering our ancestors. But these early trick or treaters would go door to door looking for hospitality and possibly threatening to push over the stove or the oven, if they didn’t get anything to eat or drink. But more commonly they would pay back with a satirical poem or just wishing back luck to the hosts like hoping their cows get attacked by wolves, if they were not treated well.

Pohjolan jumalattaret, Karolina Kouvola, kuvittanut Apila Pepita

People would remember the dead by certain important trees and listen to them creaking in the wind to tell the future and hear what the ancestors wanted to say. In the evening, they would light a bonfire and dance and sing and play circle games around it.  

Kekri eventually disappeared and All Saints Day was left and some of the Kekri customs moved to other times of the year. The bonfire part sounds like a Midsummer thing in June and the masquerade trick or treating sounds like Easter. Kekri is slowly being revived though as a harvesting celebration next to Halloween and All Saints Day in recent years.

Here’s a video of the painting process of Kekritär. 

ART SUPPLIES USED (*affiliate links that let your support the blog at no extra cost to you)

• *Winsor & Newton Cotman watercolors
• *Carioca Tita colored pencils
• Winsor & Newton watercolor paper, 190 gsm
• *HomeHobby By 3L brush
• *Graphite Transfer Paper
• United Office watercolors from Lidl
• *Micron fineliners

► *Try Amazon Prime 30-Day Free Trial for Free Premium Delivery

Juhannus ajallaan - JUHLIA VAPUSTA KEKRIIN, SKS (Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seura)

SOURCES

• Pohjolan jumalattaret, Karolina Kouvola, kuvittanut Apila Pepita
• Juhannus ajallaan - JUHLIA VAPUSTA KEKRIIN, SKS (Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seura) 
• Pyhäinpäivän vietto varhaismodernin ajan Savossa https://jyx.jyu.fi/handle/123456789/49350
• Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seura https://juhlakalenteri.finlit.fi/kekri/naamio

But how about the Mexican version Day of the Dead? I painted a Day fo the Dead sugar skull girl in this post.

🇫🇮 Sadonkorjuujuhlaan liittyy outoja ja unohdettuja perinteitä ennen modernia, kaupallista Halloweenia ja kristillistä pyhäinpäivää. Halloween-asuihin ei juuri pukeuduttu omassa lapsuudessani, mutta muutaman sadan vuoden takaa samantapainen perinne löytyy. Sen nimi ei ollut Halloween vaan kekri. Maalasin sadonkorjuujuhlaan liittyvän kekrittären eli hahmon, joksi monet pukeutuivat vanhaksi “karkki vai kepponen” -päiväksi.