"Saint Lucy's Day or the Feast of St. Lucy (Santa Lucia, Saint Lucia or sometimes Lucia for short) is the Church feast day dedicated to St. Lcuy and is observed on December 13. Its modern day celebration is generally associated with Sweden, but is also observed in Norway, Denmark, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Malta, Italy, Bosnia, Bavaria, Croatia and Slovakia. In traditional celebrations, Saint Lucy comes as a young woman with lights and sweets. It is one of the few saint days observed in Scandinavia. In some forms, a procession is headed by one girl. Wearing a white gown with a red sash and a crown of candles on her head, she walks at the head of a procession of women, each holding a candle. The candles symbolize the fire that refused to take St. Lucia's life when she was sentenced to be burned. The women sing a Lucia song while entering the room, to the melody of the traditional Neapolitan song Santa Lucia; the Italian lyrics describe the view from Santa Lucia in Naples, the various Scandinavian lyrics are fashioned for the occasion, describing the light with which Lucia overcomes the darkness. Each Scandinavian country has lyrics in their native tongues. After finishing this song, the procession sings Christmas carols or more songs about Lucia. A traditional kind of bun, Lussekatt ("St. Lucia Bun"), made with saffron, is normally eaten on this day."
Source of Information: Wikipedia
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| Group who came during the rotary meeting. |
That morning during school I got to see the girls with their candles and robes sing, and then I saw a younger group of students come sing at the rotary meeting as well. It was very nice, especially since I have never celebrated this holiday before. Well, that night my host mom and host sister had me help make lussekatt! They were quite good and it was lots of fun making them.
Another thing we did that night was decorate a pepparkakorhus (gingerbread house). We definetly piled it with lots of godis (candy) and icing.
As I've mentioned before pepparkakor and glögg are basically the ideal christmas snack, and boy have I had my fair share of pepparkakor :)
And despite almost all the snow being gone as of yesterday, it's snowing today. Go figure.
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