Christmas church services and the Christ Child are part of Christmas at nearly all daycare centres around Finland. At Easter, children in daycare are told about the crucifixion.
In other respects religious content of Finnish public daycare varies from one institution to another. There are also considerable regional differences.
In the Helsinki region, and in cities with more than 100,000 residents, religious education for preschoolers focuses largely on Christmas and Easter. Workers of the Evangelical Lutheran Church visit daycare centres most frequently at Christmastime and near Easter.
The most common manifestation of religious education linked with the holidays involves reading Bible stories to the children, according to a study by Santtu Grundström.
According to Grundström’s masters’s thesis written at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Helsinki, there is great variation in the content and implementation of religious education at schools in different parts of Finland.
Religious content at times other than the big religious holidays is very meagre in the Helsinki region and other large cities and towns.
In rural areas, there is much more religious instruction for young children outside the holiday seasons.
Church workers hold Sunday school classes and devotional events in about half of all daycare centres outside the Helsinki region. This happens in only about one fifth of daycare centres in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area.
In many daycare centres grace is said before meals. In the Helsinki area this is the practice in only about one in ten daycare centres.
National Board of Education official Antti Vanne emphasises that there are differences between religious education and the practice of religion. The latter is also permitted at the preschool level, but it is not mandatory. The parents or guardians can decide if their children should participate in such activities.
The director of a daycare centre has the right to decide if there should be religious practice in addition to religious education at a daycare centre.
