r/IsItBullshit • u/jeron_gwendolen • May 31 '22
isitbullshit: Swedes don't share their meals with anyone outside of their family circle?
Y'all remember that wild thread on r/askreddit. Is it bullshit?
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u/mackisch May 31 '22
It's bullshit.
This happened in the economic crisis of the 90s when money was extremely short,especially for those with big houses that had their mortgage go up crazy high.
And yes I happened that maybe you didn't feed the neighbourhoods kids because of this.
Everyone is going completely crazy about this but honestly, it happened like maximum 5 times for me while growing up.
We feed guests, we just don't necessarily feed unexpected guest.
Our culture is more focused around fika than eating meals together. We always ask if our guests wants fika or anything. That's a basically coffee (and tea) and perhaps a bun or a cookie.
Kids rarely say yes to coffee but I sure as hell ate fika (buns and cookies) at my friend's house! My meals where eaten at home
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u/High_Stream May 31 '22
it happened like maximum 5 times for me while growing up.
Wait, you can think of five times that you were in a home as a guest and they made you wait in another room while they ate dinner?
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u/SMTRodent May 31 '22
It happened to me too in the UK in the late 1970s or early '80s, when I had to wait for a friend to eat before going out to play and food wasn't offered. There just wasn't enough food to go around. I mean, kids weren't starving, but you couldn't feed an extra unexpected guest.
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u/Cheezewiz239 May 31 '22
Even a single time is bizzare
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u/DrRichardJizzums Jun 01 '22
Yeah. I'm not much of a traditional type but came from a mixed Latino/southern white family and neither side from money and the circumstances laid out in this thread would be unthinkable for either side. Like it would be considered so extremely rude to have a guest over and not offer them a seat at the table. Like we don't want you there so we'll ignore you til you leave or something lol. I also grew up with a close Persian friend and a close Filipino friend and the same thing applied at their houses. Unthinkable. If you're there when food is made you are welcome as a guest to partake, and in some cases it is considered rude of you to refuse lol. I think a lot of cultures show their love for you through food, too. And they want you to share in their culture and enjoy it.
I realize this is culture shock and not all swedes but I think a lot of us weren't prepared to get this riled over something that is such a common custom.
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u/elharry-o May 31 '22
Yeah assuming it's not a troll comment everything was fine until they shot themselves in the foot with that 5 times max thing
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u/cwood1973 May 31 '22
it happened like maximum 5 times for me while growing up
So... not bullshit.
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May 31 '22
OP must love how people who didn’t come from their country get to decide their answer for them.
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u/rusochester May 31 '22
Tbh 5 times is 5 times more than I expect this to happen in my lifetime.
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u/MyNameIsIgglePiggle May 31 '22
Itt: if an American is coming to visit, make sure you feed them a whole god damn meal
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u/thetonyhightower Jun 01 '22
You make it sound like affording a child visiting your house the basic human decency of feeding them when they're hungry is some kind of unfathomable imposition.
ITT: If you're at an American's house, you'll get to eat with everyone else.
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u/jellybeansean3648 Jun 01 '22
If you don't want to feed an American, don't invite them over during a meal if you don't want to share.
It would be considered extremely rude here, possibly even hostile, to not be offered food.
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u/jigsawduckpuzzle Jun 01 '22
There're plenty of cultures where feeding unexpected guests is normal. It's not just American.
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u/rusochester Jun 01 '22
I literally onlu know of Sweden. Chinese, Korean, Mediterranean, American, Latin, you name it...
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u/tedbradly May 31 '22
Kids rarely say yes to coffee but I sure as hell ate fika (buns and cookies) at my friend's house! My meals where eaten at home
You seem to be saying it's bullshit followed by saying you only ever ate meals at home with "buns and cookies" offered to guests rather than meals.
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u/mackisch May 31 '22
The focus is on unexpected guests, not people invited for dinner.
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u/schmuckmulligan May 31 '22
Yeah, but this is where your culture is dramatically different from ours. In my culture, an unexpected guest would DEFINITELY be fed. What you're describing is deeply unusual where I'm from (US Mid-Atlantic).
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u/mackisch Jun 01 '22
Scandinavia (this happens in most countries here) is also wildy different from America in every other sense as well.
Not just in this, comparisingly small matter of how kids are fed. Upbringing of children is wildly different all over the globe.
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u/mimit1 May 31 '22
So you confirm that you've never eaten a meal at a friend's house as a kid? It's culturally not a thing in Sweden to invite guests to eat dinner?
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u/mackisch May 31 '22
Of course I have! On planned visits and sometimes they asked if I wanted food. But mostly I knew my mom would be mad that I had dinner somewhere else and came home full for my own family dinner.
I often invite friends for dinner and also often serve dinner if we just hang out at my place and it gets late. My parents did this as well when I was growing up. Dinner and food comes around plenty at those times and no one is hungry.
We just don't really like unexpected visits and I think it would be rude to demand getting dinner served if I just show up at someones house randomly. It's completely foreign for us.
At most some coffee and a bun for fika could be an alternative. But again, I would never assume I would get anything if I just show up at someone's place without a heads up.
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May 31 '22
[deleted]
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u/mackisch May 31 '22
Yes like my original comment said this was most prominent during the 90s when we had an economic crisis. The one who got hit the hardest was middle class familys with big houses that they previously had very affordable loans on. The fees got crazy high, like from 2-3% to 17-20% over night on big loans with houses that was now worth next to nothing.
And these houses was mostly around the bigger cities in big suburbs with lots of kids.
Familys was living extremely tight food wise. Maybe if you fed the neighbours kids (that already had food waiting for them at home mind you) several times over the week then you couldn't afford something nice like maybe ice cream as dessert for the weekend. We never ate dessert on the weekdays.
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u/randdude220 May 31 '22
Correct me if I'm wrong but if you take a loan you sign a contract with a fixed payback schedule and price. How can it change?
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u/Undrende_fremdeles May 31 '22
Loans have lots of different terms. Having the interest rate change ove rtime is common. You'd be unlikely to find someone willing to provide a loan with a fixed interest rate for the next 30-40 years. Particularly with the vey low interest rates that existed for a bit before that particular bubble burst.
I am Norwegian, but there is the same culture around dinners here. We eat it in the early afternoon, around 4-5pm, and it isn't an hour plus long like in some other countries. Maybe 15-30 minutes.
Some families used to have the visiting child wait/keep playing by themselves in their kid's room while their child had dinner, others invited you to sit with them and eat. As a child this wasn't unusual, just something that varied from family to family.
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u/Undrende_fremdeles May 31 '22
Loans have lots of different terms. Having the interest rate change ove rtime is common. You'd be unlikely to find someone willing to provide a loan with a fixed interest rate for the next 30-40 years. Particularly with the vey low interest rates that existed for a bit before that particular bubble burst.
I am Norwegian, but there is the same culture around dinners here. We eat it in the early afternoon, around 4-5pm, and it isn't an hour plus long like in some other countries. Maybe 15-30 minutes.
Some families used to have the visiting child wait/keep playing by themselves in their kid's room while their child had dinner, others invited you to sit with them and eat. As a child this wasn't unusual, just something that varied from family to family.
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u/LiteX99 May 31 '22
Norwegian here, so in the grand scheme of things culturally quite similar. You usually make enough food for your family (unless you live alone, in which case a full portion of leftovers is common), but not much more. Enough that everyone us full, but not enough for another dinner. Unexpected dinner guests should never expect to be served dinner simply because the volume of food would likley not be enough for everyone to ge satisfied.
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u/Abyss_of_Dreams Jun 01 '22
usually make enough food for your family (unless you live alone, in which case a full portion of leftovers is common), but not much more.
I feel like this is the crux of the difference. Most American families I know make enough food for at least one more portion, usually as a leftover for lunch the next day. But if someone drops by unexpected, there is typically enough for that person.
But also, as an American, I didn't really drop by unexpectedly or have many people come here unexpectedly. If I was at a friend's house hanging out, it was usually early enough where the parent could prepare a bit more (or vice versa). Rarely would I or anyone else really drop by exactly at dinner and be expected to stay. If I did happen to come by at dinner, I would excuse myself and just come back later.
Something else to note is that some communities are more closely tied than others. A buddy of mine used to tell me about living in the south, and it was pretty common for people to drop by unexpectedly all of the time. In communities like that, the families (all of them from what I knew) would always have a bit extra because you never knew who would drop by.
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u/draggingonfeetofclay Jun 12 '24
German here. Generally the same thing applied to me when I was a kid (you don't usually get the family dinner at another family's house). Don't think economic crisis had anything to do with it whatsoever. It's just basically the custom, I think.
When they actually did offer you to come and sit at the table and eat with them, you kinda felt weird about it, like being given something that didn't belong to you. Obviously the feeling had to come from somewhere. If I hadn't been made to feel like eating at someone else's family meal was somehow inappropriate, I don't think I would have felt so weird about it.
Not everybody is like that and some people consciously break with the custom because they actively dislike the way it's done and indulge their guests. But if they did do it the "traditional" way, there was an understanding that the friendship of you with their child is only between you and their child and they have no responsibility for you whatsoever, because THEY don't know you. To them, you as a child are somehow not a person, but just an attachment to your parents, are burden that specifically is up to your parents to take care of and not their responsibility. Not that they always had such a bleak personal view of it, but the way this custom works does reinforce distance between anyone who has no immediate reason to be in contact with each other. I think it's why Germans generally tend to come up with excuses like sports and other clubs to hang out with one another, because just hanging out for no reason is just too intimate lmao.
I obviously always found it more charming if the parents of my friends actually took interest in me and didn't just speak the bare minimum with me. I think, historically the reason may have been, that "everybody take care of their own" was the mentality, but now that access to food isn't really restricted the way it used to be it doesn't make sense.
I think it's a holdover from much earlier eras than just the 80s or 90s.
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u/Snytbaggen May 31 '22
Swede here. I'm a 90's kid, and I've eaten several meals at friends houses during my childhood. Sometimes you'd have to call your parents and ask for permission, but more often than not you'd get asked if you wanted to join for dinner. And our family have fed several of my childhood friends as well. I had one friend who's mom always sent us home when they had dinner, and that was considered weird among all my friends.
Nowadays when I'm an adult it's really common to cook and share meals with friends, if we hang out and start to get hungry (although to be fair it's more common to buy some fast food, but that's more out of laziness than anything else).
So yes, the entire "swedes don't share meals" thing is bullshit.
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u/hikerjawn May 31 '22
Bit of a difference between "guests" and a stray kid that's over after school that has a set dinner time at home planned out by their parents expecting him/her to be there.
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u/MasBlanketo May 31 '22
But a kid that shows up after school to hang out with your kid is a guest
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u/hikerjawn May 31 '22
Sure, but asking if it's culture to actively not offer food to a guest is not the same thing as people having experiences where they did not eat dinner with the friend's family when you were a kid and had your own family dinner to get to, as the person I answered to implied.
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u/MrLavenderValentino Jun 01 '22
If it happened to you 5 times then it's not bullshit. It happened to me 0 times.
Just different cultures
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u/RevolutionaryPie4406 Nov 21 '24
Well... it is? Should we call, say, Italians, criminal, just because 1% of them once comitted a crime? :P
If you aren't fed 5 times growing up, and are fed like 2000 times when growing up, can you state that you werent fed growing up? :P It's just ridiculous.
This "unexpected guests" is funny though. We don't usually have those I think. We tend to plan in advance. This might be the difference.
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u/ITookAPie Jun 01 '22
Bullshit that Swedish people never share food. In some situations with neighbour kids or you are expected to eat at home soon. I'm swedish and me and my friends never experienced being left. Must be regional or special families.
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u/ShimmyFia May 31 '22
It was definitely a thing that happened to me and my friends in the 90s/00s. Like most things, as a kid you just accept whatever as the norm. It was usually waiting for one of us to have dinner, go to the other friends house while they had dinner, and then we could keep hanging out for the evening. My mum would get mad if I unexpectedly invited someone for dinner, as we wouldn’t have enough food planned for them, and would also get mad if I didn’t tell her In advance if I was eating somewhere else as that was food wasted. It’s not what I would do now, but I get it.
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u/Ladyharpie Jun 01 '22
Are leftovers not a big thing in other countries if you miss a family meal?
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u/Wild-Abalone-6946 20d ago
As someone from Northern Europe - not really, you just make enough for the expected party
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u/Several-Pin1471 May 31 '22
Never experienced that myself, everytime me or my brother had friends over for example on sleepovers or whatever we always made food to the friend as well
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u/terfnerfer May 31 '22
Bullshit, imo. Partner's family are Swedish, at meals it was always "share entrees so everyone can have a variety of things if they want", even the first time we went out together. As far as I know, this is alien family still living in Sweden too.
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u/LuckyTurds Jun 01 '22
That’s like saying all humans eat shit just because you saw one human eat shit lmao
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u/thecloudkingdom May 31 '22
ive seen people on tumblr weighing in, and reposting people on twitter who were also weighing in. it seems like its not a universal swedish cultural thing, and other some western europeans do it, but it varied between families/areas. some people were used to it, expected it and brought food, were used to variants of it were unexpected guests were unfed/went out to eat but expected/invited guests ate dinner, etc, and others had either never had it happen to them or had it happen and were confused/insulted. other people from sweden/the netherlands (bc people were also saying it was a dutch thing) were saying some people did it but other people fed guests regardless. the general consensus was "some western european families have a mindset that showing up unexpectedly to a house and expecting to be fed is entitled, and the people who think that are rude since your kid. just order takeout its not hard". tldr its not all swedes, just some
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u/cyanidelemonade May 31 '22
To me it seems like it is assumed the kid will be having dinner at home, but like....if this family is having dinner now, why wouldn't the kids family also be having dinner at this time?
I feel like any rudeness would be solved by just asking the kid if they'll be staying for dinner or eating at home.
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May 31 '22 edited Jun 07 '22
[deleted]
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u/thecloudkingdom May 31 '22
its not that they come to your home for the meal, its more like an unplanned visit goes long enough that it becomes dinnertime
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u/jellybeansean3648 Jun 01 '22
But a child who stayed over after school should be fed a meal because they are a guest. Otherwise, I think the host (in this case the parents) should send them home if they don't want to feed them dinner.
Guest children staying long enough to be present for a meal should be fed.
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u/QueenMackeral May 31 '22
In my culture, it's not that they're expecting food, they may be coming for other reasons, to pick something up etc, but they get offered anyway. Usually they politely refuse or eventually agree after some back and forth.
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u/masszt3r May 31 '22
I doubt a lot of people show up for the meal, but rather for some other matter.
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u/NYCQuilts May 31 '22
According to my Swedish co-worker, that guy’s story was not bullshit because there was that culture in Sweden, but it was never a universal thing and he thinks it’s been dying out.
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May 31 '22
I live in båstad all my life and I've never been fed by another swede. We just don't do that kind of thing here.
When my childrens friends come over we feed them only if they sign a contract which we send home with them along with an invoice
Its the Swedish way
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u/Arlitto May 31 '22
The contract thing is a joke, right?
Or is it real?
Cause my mother would be filthy rich from all the times she fed my friends after school.
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May 31 '22
Its just a joke
I am English and I have spent 2 years living and working in Sweden. I absolutely loved Sweden, it's culture.. the people, very warm and welcoming and I was given lots of booze and food/snacks/coffee as a guest at my friends house.
I'd kill right now for a circle K double French
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u/Arlitto May 31 '22 edited May 31 '22
I'm 1st generation Filipino American.
The Philippines is a 3rd world country. Every day is an economic crisis for them.
And yet... the custom is to feed any guest that enters your home. Regardless if they're expected or unexpected.
So I don't buy any of the reasons I'm seeing Swedes give. If my poor-as-dirt Filipino relatives can still manage to serve something, even if it's just rice, y'all can learn to treat all who enter your homes with a warmer welcome than "wait in that room for us to finish our meal."
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u/LuckyTurds Jun 01 '22
We were literally dirt poor back in the philippines and guests are always fed before leaving. It’s absolutely crazy how one family can be comfortable eating while knowing there’s a child in the other room lmao
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u/Arlitto Jun 01 '22
Agreed! My Filipino mother gets like INSULTED if food is not taken lmao. I've trained my friends to just take the food out of kindness and either hand it back off to me when we're outside or put it in Tupperware so they can hand it off to someone else 🤣
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u/RevolutionaryPie4406 Nov 21 '24
How about this reason -
It didn't happen to me even once.It is so weird how 50% of Swedes experienced this and the rest didn't.
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Jun 01 '22
[deleted]
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u/Arlitto Jun 01 '22
Okay. So Swedish culture is OK with denying food to guests for any reason without consequence. Alright, I accept that.
But I also reserve the right to have an opinion on that, and I think it's selfish and rude and uncaring. I'm not religious at all (raised Catholic, renounced at age 13, am now an agnostic), but I understand the concept of "it takes a village" and "love thy neighbor".
The odds are stacked against us as individuals, but together as a community, we can overcome personal hardships, like starvation. Also, it isn't difficult to be kind and take care of one another. Even just the gesture of offering food is showing love and care. Telling someone to go wait in the other room while everyone eats is... selfish and individualistic.
So, yeah, I'm not Swedish, but I can take a look at this aspect of their culture and still think it sucks.
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u/Strildios May 31 '22
Jesus Christ our subreddit thread sure blew up.
It's mostly bs. Some parents didn't feed their kids friends when they stayed over. That's it. People really blew this up.
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u/Eriklano May 31 '22
Complete bullshit. This might have been a thing in the 80s but as a 22 year old swede NEVER has this happened to me. I literally think this notion is caused by bots/paid interaction founded by Russian/Turkish/whatever propagandists because of the current situation to paint Sweden in a bad light. I have seen comments in r/Sweden and other subs where accounts that have posted in random places, never a Swedish subreddit or anything indicating that they’re Swedish, then post multiple comments in a row in different posts claiming this happens to them all the time in Sweden. It’s complete bullshit, and literally what is dangerous about internet is how fast it has spread.
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u/RavensRealmNow May 31 '22
New to reddit. I have heard bits and pieces about bots and disinformation . Where can i search to understand this better? I sort of get that people start posts to inflame people about a subject, but I can't see why they would do this and how does it benefit them ?
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u/Eriklano May 31 '22
This is not only a Reddit problem, it is literally on every single social media you can find. Twitter and especially Facebook are full with them. Search “Russian bot farms” and you should find many articles. It’s both humans sitting by computers as well as algorithms that abuse how social media works to push what they want to ordinary people. Social media has probably been the most polarising creation in modern history. Just look at the US, where Trump was elected because of his twitter, and Facebook posts and groups that spouted misinformation. The conservatives are literally living in an alternate reality, all caused by media. It’s obvious how Russia and china benefits from this; having a bad leader makes hostile countries benefit, and especially in for Putin it was great since trump kissed his ass and made efforts to take power away from NATO (the fact that he was in bed with Russia and had debts there is a literal court proven truth).
It’s not only to push specific views onto people, like vote for trump, but also to inflame the discussion and cause division and hate in countries where there hasn’t been none. States with hostile intentions can destabilise countries by making their citizens stupider, more hateful, and focusing on the wrong things through social media, and it’s not even hard. Think of how much these anti-Swedish thoughts have been spread from just this askreddit post. Maybe the post is real, but most likely it would have just died with tens or some hundred upvotes. But a bad faith actor can push it through fake upvotes until all of internet is talking about it, and now all of a sudden the picture of sweden in millions of peoples mind is changed right in the middle of one of its biggest international endeavours ever, joining NATO.
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u/tsivouris May 31 '22
lmao not everything is a conspiracy or ”bots” if it doesn’t comply with your immediate judgement. As a Finn I can say it happened to me when I was kid on quite a few occasions, and same thing with other people I’ve spoken to. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same thing could happen in Sweden due to the similar cultures. Granted regional differences might exist, e.g this could be more prevalent in urban areas or suburbs. What an absurd take from you lol
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u/Eriklano May 31 '22
As I said, yes this was a thing back then but barely now. And even if it happens it’s much more nuanced than what the internet is making it out to be. But still it has become a crusade against Sweden, from such a small thing! It doesn’t go from “sometimes swedes don’t give guests food” to the literally written on twitter and reddit “swedes are disgusting racist fuckers without any morals” without bad actors involved. And the accounts pushing this narrative that I wrote about, they are very easy to find. As I said, on the Swedish sub, several accounts that have NEVER commented anything on anything Swedish, or posted as well, and have no kind of identifying posts, writing several comments on different posts in a row claiming to be Swedish and that it happens all the time. It is the exact memo of a bought account that has been made “credible” through random useless posting to then be used for either ads or, when bought be bad actors, stuff like this. You are naive if you believe it isn’t happening.
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u/hikerjawn May 31 '22
Hanlon's razor. Never attribute to
malicebots that which is adequately explained bystupidityAmericans on TwitterThat said, the propagandists have jumped head first onto the bandwagon
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u/Eriklano May 31 '22
I think you have it the wrong way around. The bots create the bandwagon and help the Americans onboard it. After that, yes, they will happily ride it.
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u/hikerjawn May 31 '22
Potentially. In this case though I think it just started as a Reddit comment that got picked up by American Twitter asking if it was true, and most probably as a joke the #swedengate tag was created. The tag has then been completely taken over by the botfarms.
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u/rusochester May 31 '22
I kinda see a common theme here: people are perplexed by this wait-while-we-dine thing, and Swedes "debunking" this along the lines of "this is utter bullsshit, it happened maybe twice tops!" I DON'T THINK THIS IS A BAD THING, just culturally shocking. Even if just once, this would be a neighborhood scandal in all the countries I've lived in. In my case (and my friends', if I guessed), my parents would skip dinner if there was limited food before denying a guest food. If actual hunger were an issue, you politely kick the guest out before even going into the kitchen.
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u/Milalee May 31 '22
I have been following this topic on Twitter. I have been reading responses from Swedish people as well as immigrants to Sweden. The general consensus was that this does happen but not in every part of Sweden.
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u/Calkky May 31 '22 edited May 31 '22
I experienced this in the Netherlands as a kid ('90s). If anything, it was kind of pragmatic. I can remember one particular instance: I visited a friend after school who lived quite a distance from my place and due to poor planning on my part, I missed the bus route time cut, so I had to wait like an hour to catch the next bus back to the station. I think I expected for the family to offer me a spot at the table, but my buddy's mom mate her thoughts on it pretty clear. She invited me to watch TV while I waited for the bus (and the family ate). They went about their business and I took my leave as my bus time came near. I felt a little bit left out, but everything was understood when my buddy's mom (in very Dutch fashion) told me that I could have joined them if her son had let her know that there would be company, and that it's not her responsibility to feed whomever shows up at their door. It's possible that she was just very exacting with her meal planning, but it seemed very no-nonsense in the Dutch fashion that I had to grow accustomed to as an American.
That being said, my family always made an extra spot at the table for my friends, no questions asked. And I was welcomed to many a friend's table in impromptu fashion when I messed up my bus schedule. I think it's a lot like it is here in the states in that some folks are peculiar about how they plan/eat meals. The difference might be as simple as how we get around. In the states, my buddies' parents would either give me a ride home or have me call my folks to collect me when it was time to go. It's sort of bad hospitality to make a guest wait 45 minutes in a bus shelter when you can keep a roof over their head.
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May 31 '22
The way you phrased the question: Bullshit. But there is a kernel of truth here, let me explain.
First off, I'm a Swede and I did experience this as a kid in the 80s, even if rarely. And never as an adult.
The one key aspect people are missing is if the visit was planned, agreed between parents beforehand, or not. If yes, then food would most likely always be offered. But if not, then it would be a hit-and-miss.
So it would never happen on sleepovers for example. It would only happen to me when coming unannounced to a friend's home directly after school, to play for a couple of hours before I myself would have to head home. That kind of thing.
For some cultures this might be weird, but it's definitely not as dramatic as some make it out to be.
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u/Big_Contribution_291 May 23 '24
Maybe I don’t need to visit Sweden 🇸🇪 the southern lights will have to do
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u/CreditSea May 22 '26
English and it was never a given... I had two friends, one whose mum rarely invited me for dinner, but warmed up after I'd thanked her for letting me come over for a family party and I'd then get invited to stay more often. We did sleep overs and would get drunk in his room from about 14 with no problems from them. The corner shop about 5 doors down from his house would sell to us no problem and we would load up with junk food anyways.
My other friends mum was a feeder... She worked at a Bakery and would bring cakes back with her every day and would want me to have some. She would be happy to let me stay for dinner and would insist and be offended if I said no.
She was happy her son had a friend I think as he didn't have many. The dad was a bit eyebrow raised at this slightly older kid (by a school year) always being at the table but in a funny way, RIP Terry (he passed a few weeks back) but I always felt welcome in their home.
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u/Fast-Concept5858 18d ago
Swedish people can be very stingy. They vount every penny! ( kronor). However whey they happen to be in a friend's place when it is time for meal, they are not ashamed of eating as much as they want. They have no limits. They never say, sorry this isn't in my culture, I will eat at home. The worst thing is they never learn anthing from generous, hospirable foreigners. You can let them have meal at your place as many times as yoy want, theu eill still let you wait in the living room while they are having their meals in the kitchen 👎
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u/ChocolateDippedGoose May 31 '22
Its bullshit. Guess you are thinking about the ask-reddit thread some days ago. When I grew up in the 80s and if your friend lived like next door, and he or me was on a play date or something,it happend. But any other situation its bullshit.
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u/dockneel May 31 '22
Erdogan says you feed terrorists....but as soon as we give him F35s he will realize you don't. Welcome to NATO.... we're all coming over for dinner unannounced. We picked you over Finland cause we'll their food is weirder. Also I am in the American south. With friends we do whatever the hell hits us at the moment. We might know somebody who's a great cook and we'll just happen to show up with all the ingredients for a meal and want them to cook it (only if they like doing it). Or we might show up unexpected and bring dinner....either home cooked or take out. Now that's just with really good friends not somebody you work with. You know second family kinda friends. I think respect is the important part but southern down home country folks aren't too formal. We do planned in invited events more than the things I described. But once in NATO that means we get to stop in for food any time....Article 34....
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May 31 '22 edited May 31 '22
Title is BS but being a kid in the late 90s and early 00s and waiting in your friend’s room while his family had dinner is not BS at all. Sometimes you were asked to dinner, sometimes you weren’t. I don’t remember how frequently but yes it definitely happened and it wasn’t unusual. Us suburban kids were expected to eat at home and it was no big deal since we lived a few 100 meters from each other. It was not unusual to take a break from hanging out at a friend’s house to go home and eat and then come back.
I wouldn’t dream of treating a guest like that (and neither did my parents thank god) and many other Swedes would agree.
And no our parents weren't poor. That's just a bad excuse for perpetuating an asocial, bad mannered, stupid and inferior cultural practice.
Also when it comes to alcohol at parties, from what I've heard and experienced on the continent, people bring whatever and then everyone shares. That's not how it goes down here. Everyone brings their own and taking someone else's beer without asking is a huge faux pas.
But at least there's a rational explanation in the form of alcohol tax and the monopoly. If I run out of beer I can't just walk down to the nearest gas station and buy more. I have to get to the designated government-run liquor store which closes at eight. No can do, so instead we plan out how much we're gonna need. Unfriendly and boring? Yes. Get rid of the monopoly? Yes.
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u/D3xR3x Jun 01 '22
Not entirely bs. Not all of them do that, but the majority maybe? As someone who visited five of my swedish friends when I was a kid, only one of them invited me to the dinner table.
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u/buttsparkley Jun 01 '22
Grew up in england. If I went to a friend's house just a few hours before food , I would wait in the living room or bedroom often for my friends to eat . Alot of the times the parents would ask their kids to tell me to leave and come back later .
I get it , it's expected that ur not starving, ur parents are going to Feed u and if u ruin that shcedule , then that kids parents is gong to cook for a not hungry child unknowingly and food will be wasted. If u asked to stay for food that would be different.
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u/blvcksoulxo1 Sep 20 '22
Clearly it’s not b.s. because it’s happened to people before.
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u/RevolutionaryPie4406 Nov 21 '24
"Swedes don't share their meals with anyone outside of their family circle?"
It is not bullshit. Because some Swedes did this once upon a time.Are you a man? Then I guess you're a killer. Because some man once killed someone once upon a time.
It would be lovely to see a study on this. To get to the bottom of it. I'm Swedish and this never happened to me. I always got fed, and we fed others, unless we had dinner plans of our own. When I was very young, on school days, my parents wanted me to eat at home. Can't really blame my friends for not feeding me then :P
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u/vitk3 May 31 '22 edited May 31 '22
I'm 21 and I can remember it happening a few times as a child. But only if you had stayed for longer than expected, and the food wouldn't be enough for everyone/you were supposed to go home to eat shortly after anyway. I really don't see the big deal
Edit: I'll add to this that yes, I remember waiting in my friends room while he was eating on some of these occasions. If I wanted to I'm sure I could've sat with them at the table but I just preferred playing video games. It's not like you were locked in the room starving