The Christmas season can sometimes be tough on players hailing from overseas. The customs and traditional foods are different. The break isn't quite long enough to justify taking a round-trip abroad. Meanwhile, most of their teammates disperse across North America until the end of the break.
Often, teams' European players try to bring little touches from home to their in-season living spaces. Especially if they have teammates from the same home country, they'll celebrate together. On the Flyers, this is a tradition that dates back to the arrival of the Flyers' first two European players: Swedes Pelle Lindbergh and Thomas Eriksson.
Both with the AHL's Maine Mariners and in the NHL with the Flyers, Lindbergh and Eriksson tried to replicate a Swedish "jul" as closely as possible. They celebrated on Dec. 24 (as is customary in Sweden and many other European nations). They listened to Swedish Christmas music. They ate foods from the care packages their families sent from Stockholm. Pelle's girlfriends (later, fiancée) Kerstin prepared dishes from the recipes used by Pelle's mother, Anna-Lisa.
Years later, Flyers right winger Mikael Renberg connected his rookie teammate, Finnish defenseman Janne Niinimaa, with a local German-born butcher who cured Christmas hams in the style common both in northern Sweden and northern Finland. Renberg and Niinimaa, as with Lindbergh, Eriksson and Pelle Eklund a decade earlier, did their best to replicate the Christmas traditions they grew up with at home.
The same scenarios have played out over many holiday seasons, whether the players were from Czechia, Slovakia, Russia, Germany or elsewhere. Players did the best they could to celebrate together and remind themselves of home if their families were unable to visit over the holidays.
Fast forward to 2023. Current Flyers goaltender Samuel Ersson has brought his entire immediate family over on a visit from his hometown of Falun, Sweden. Ersson's parents, Hans and Lena, brothers Marcus and Axel, sisters Lisbet and Kerstin, and girlfriend, Olivia, are in all town.
"My parents just came here for the first time to see me play in the NHL," Ersson said, after shutting out the Detroit Red wings on Dec. 16. "This was the second game. My siblings aren't here yet. They went on kind of a vacation," Ersson said, laughing. “They'll see other places as well and they'll come here for a little bit.”
Over Christmas, the family will together to visit New York City. Ersson said that the family visit and trip to New York is something that he's being looking forward to for months.
The timing could not have been better. Ersson's family has gotten to see him excel over the course of making five consecutive starts. So far in December, Ersson has gone 4-1-1 with 2.26 goals against average, .919 save percentage and the aforementioned 32-save shutout against Detroit.
"Yeah, it's pretty cool that it's worked out this way," Ersson said. "Best part is that we've been winning."
