Saint Stephen's Day bandy

Saint Stephen's Day bandy (Swedish: Annandagsbandy) is a Swedish sporting event in which elite bandy matches are played on Saint Stephen's Day (December 26th). During the 20th century, it became a Christmas tradition in Sweden.[1]

Saint Stephen's Day bandy
Anndandagsbandy
2004 Saint Stephen's Day game between Bollnäs GoIF and Edsbyns IF.
Statusactive
Genresporting event
Date(s)26 December
Frequencyannual
Inaugurated1930's

History

The tradition dates to the 1930s, when the two clubs IF Göta and Slottsbrons IF took to playing a Saint Stephen's Day Exhibition game. Despite initial objections by the Church of Sweden to scheduling the game on the Saint Stephen's Day, the event grew in popularity thereafter.[2]

Historically, only a few instances of the Saint Stephen's Day match marked the season opener for Elitserien, Sweden’s top division. Prior to 1957, Saint Stephen's Day was the date of the final friendly match, after which the season usually started on New Year's Day. In 1957, the top division in Sweden resumed in December, and the Saint Stephen's Day marked the first day of seasons between 1957 and 1961, (the 1962 season began on December 31). From 1963–64 onwards the season began earlier in December, and since the 1966–67 season games have started in November.

Until 1999, Saint Stephen's Day bandy was the only major sports event over Christmas in Sweden. Starting in the year 2000, its popularity led other sports to follow, such as handball and ice hockey. Now people sometimes instead talk of "Saint Stephen's Day sports" (Swedish: Annandagsidrott).[3]

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gollark: Oh, this too:- ignoring relevant laws and gathering data anyway until new laws can retroactively allow it- getting around limits on spying on citizens by sharing data with other "Five Eyes" nations and spying on them as foreigners
gollark: Well, it's pretty known that they do go around intercepting lots of stuff. There are many problems with this:- having private data like your internet traffic stored somewhere is kind of bad in itself.- if it's not abused yet it's basically only a matter of time.- there's no transparency anywhere and even a system of secret courts to judge things- it may help slightly to stop terrorists (no transparency so we can't check really) but is just a massive breach of privacy
gollark: GNU+Windows?
gollark: We'll see who's a fool when I backtrace your IP with Visual Basic!

References
  1. Rosqvist, Berndt (22 December 2003). "Festligt och fullsatt på stora bandydagen" [Festive and packed with great bandy day]. Dagens Nyheter (in Swedish). Retrieved 2010-02-04.
  2. "Annandagsbandy enligt traditioner". uppsalanyheter.se. Retrieved March 1, 2020.
  3. "Annandagsidrott med traditioner". sydsvenskan.se. Retrieved March 1, 2020.
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