Christmas in Estonia is a mixture of pagan traditions celebrating mid-winter and religious ceremonies. It is customary to give the house a really good clean before the family partake in a Christmas Eve sauna. The sweating, beating and bathing of the sauna are thought to cleanse the family. Children are then dressed in new clothes in readiness for Church and a Mass ceremony. After Mass, a large feast of traditional foods and other delicacies is consumed. Traditional foods that may be eaten are black pudding (blood sausage), goose, and sauerkraut. The feasting is believed to make you strong for the coming year.

So we don’t have to feel guilty about overindulging at Christmas anymore – it makes us stronger.
Read more here http://www.vm.ee/?q=en/node/5747

Estonians aren’t the only ones who enjoy a good sauna, with the Russians and Fins also loving a good sweat - though apparently all saunas are not created equal.

Here’s an account, from an outsider’s point of view, of the Estonian sauna experience:
Through the eye-stinging smoke I could barely see the outline of Eda Veeroja, a self-described sauna expert and my guide to the Estonian "smoke" sauna. As she gently ladled water over the scalding stones, she turned to me in all her glory and said, "So, are you ready for your bath and first beating?" I tensed up for a second and then, flicking a bead of sweat from a brow, obediently lay face down on a dark wooden bench in the 103-year-old sauna, set near a bucolic stream in southeastern Estonia. Ms. Veeroja took a bundle of leafy birch branches and proceeded to strike me lightly with it, first my legs, then my arms, then my back and backside. Even as she began to beat a little harder, what I felt wasn‘t pain, but a surprising warm glow that spread across my body.

One Estonian fire chief was so crazy about his saunas that he went so far as to build one on the back of a fire truck. It accompanies the crew on the road to help them to relax. But if that’s not crazy enough for you, try a floating sauna! A raft-like construction houses a sauna to enjoy while floating down a river through Estonia’s Soomaa National Park. Check it out here http://www.soomaa.com/?id=52&lang=eng
Other information for this post was found here http://www.infoturism.ee/eng/uudis.php?id=1619&cat=38 
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