Kekri

Camera details
Camera: Sony Xperia Z1 Compact mobile phone F5321
Exposure: 1/20 sec.
Aperture: f/2.0
ISO: 800
Focal Length: 4.2 mm (24 mm equivalent digitally zoomed 1.3 times, which then turns it to ~32 mm equivalent)
Lens: Clip-on macro lens (magnifying glass).
Editing: Snapseed

It is surprisingly difficult use macro photograph to illustrate such thing as a tradition. Especially, when the tradition is ambiguous and almost no longer existing. But that's why these challenges are for!

After long and hard thinking I finally decided to illustrate harvest festival:

Old English hærfest "autumn," as one of the four seasons, "period between August and November," from Proto-Germanic *harbitas (source also of Old Saxon hervist, Old Frisian and Dutch herfst, German Herbst "autumn," Old Norse haust "harvest"), from PIE root *kerp- "to gather, pluck, harvest.
~www.etymonline.com/word/harvest

Kekri is sort of Finnish form of harvest festivities and period of time marking the end of the agricultural year and the auction, slaughter or bringing in of the cattle into sheds for the Winter.

The celebration involved a bonfire and feast. Servants were entitled to one week off work, and landowners were obliged to invite them for a meal.Young unmarried men would dress in furs (by turning their fur coats inside out), masks and horns to depict Kekri goats, and travel from door to door begging for sahti, a fermented drink.

Later on many Kekri traditions and symbols became part of other winter festivities, and for example Kekri goat became as Yule Goat, and also sort of former Father Christmas and Santa Claus:

The Yule goat's origins go back to ancient Pagan festivals. While a popular theory is that the celebration of the goat is connected to worship of the Norse god Thor, who rode the sky in a chariot drawn by two goats, Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr, it goes back to common Indo-European beliefs. The last sheaf of grain bundled in the harvest was credited with magical properties as the spirit of the harvest and saved for the Yule celebrations, called among other things Yule goat (Julbocken).
~en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yule_Goat

However, today Kekri has again becoming more popular and sort of a rival for Halloween. For example in Kajaani, Finland it has become a tradition to intentionally burn a huge straw goat as a bonfire in the beginning of November. It is sort of funny because what has been merely as a criminal act almost every year in Gävle, Sweden has now become as a tradition in Finland.

Therefore a goat, and especially straw goat is probably the best symbol of Kekri.



Readings:
▻ Kekri: Finnish Samhain
▻ From Kekri to Christmas
▻ Finnish traditions, Kekri
▻ Kekri o el primo finlandés del Halloween
▻ The strange legend of the Swedish Yule goat