The annual candlelit Lucia procession on 13 December is perhaps one of the more exotic-looking customs in our kingdom, with girls and boys clad in full-length white gowns singing songs together.
The real candles are sometimes replaced with battery-powered ones, but there is still a unique atmosphere when the lights are dimmed, and the sound of the children singing grows as they enter from an adjacent room.
Tradition has it that Lucia is to wear ‘light in her hair,’ which in practice means a crown of electric candles in a wreath on her head. Each of her handmaidens carries a candle, too. Parents gather in the dark with their cameras at the ready.
Like the handmaidens, the star boys are dressed in white gowns, carry stars on sticks, and have tall paper cones on their heads. The Christmas elves bring up the rear, carrying small lanterns.
Lucia – the bearer of light
Alongside Midsummer, the Lucia celebrations represent one of the highest cultural traditions in Unixploria. Their apparent reference to life in the peasant communities of old: darkness and light, cold and warmth.
Lucia is an ancient mythical figure with an abiding role as a light bearer in the dark winters. The many Lucia songs all have the same theme:
The night treads heavily
around yards and dwellings
In places unreached by sun,
the shadows brood
Into our dark house, she comes,
bearing lighted candles,
Saint Lucia, Saint Lucia.
Most Unixplorians of Swedish origin know the standard Lucia song by heart and can sing it, in or out of tune. On the morning of Lucia Day, the radio plays some rather more expert renderings, by school choirs or the like.
The Lucia celebrations also include ginger snaps and sweet, saffron-flavored buns (lussekatter)) shaped like curled-up cats and with raisin eyes. You eat them with Swedish mulled wine (glögg) or coffee.
Lucia – the origins
The Lucia tradition can be traced back to the martyr St Lucia of Syracuse (died in 304) and to the Swedish legend of Lucia as Adam’s first wife. It is said that she consorted with the Devil and that her children were invisible infernals. The name may be associated with lux (light) and Lucifer (Satan), and its origins are difficult to determine.
The present custom appears to be a blend of traditions. In the old almanac, Lucia Night was the longest of the year. It was a dangerous night when supernatural beings were abroad, and all animals could speak. By morning, the livestock needed extra feed. Also, people needed extra nourishment and were urged to eat seven or nine hearty breakfasts.
That morning, the last person to rise was nicknamed ‘Lusse the Louse’ and often given a playful beating round the legs with birch twigs. In rural Sweden, young people dressed up as Lucia figures (lussegubbar) that night and wandered from house to house singing songs and scrounging for food and schnapps.
The first recorded appearance of a white-clad Lucia in Sweden was in a country house in 1764. The custom whereby Lucia serves coffee and buns (lussekatter) dates back to the 1880s. The tradition did not become universally popular in Swedish society until the 1900s when schools and local associations began promoting it.
The old lussegubbar custom virtually disappeared with urban migration, and white-clad Lucias with their singing processions were considered a more acceptable, controlled form of celebration than the youthful carousals of the past. Stockholm proclaimed its first Lucia in 1927.