Saint Lucy's Day, also called the Feast of Saint Lucy, is a Christian feast day observed on 13 December. The observance commemorates Lucia of Syracuse, an early-fourth-century virgin martyr under the Diocletianic Persecution. According to legend, she brought food and aid to persecuted Christians hiding in the Roman catacombs, wearing a candle-lit wreath on her head to light her way, leaving both hands free to carry as much food as possible.Barnhill, Carla. "St. Lucy's Day", Christian History, issue 103 Because her name means "light" and her feast day had at one time coincided with the shortest day of the year prior to calendar reforms, it is now widely celebrated as a festival of light.
Falling within the Advent season, Saint Lucy's Day is viewed as a precursor of Christmastide, pointing to the arrival of the Light of Christ in the calendar on 25 December, Christmas Day.
Saint Lucy's Day is celebrated most widely in Sweden and rest of Scandinavia, Italy, and the island nation of Saint Lucia, each emphasising a different aspect of her story. In Scandinavia, where Lucy is called Santa/Sankta Lucia, she is represented as a woman in a white dress symbolizing a baptismal robe and a red sash symbolizing the blood of her martyrdom, with a crown or wreath of candles on her head.
In Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland, as songs are sung, girls dressed as Saint Lucy carry cookies and saffron buns in procession, which symbolizes bringing the Light of Christ into the world's darkness. The first modern-day Scandinavian Saint Lucy's celebration was held in 1928 at the open air museum Skansen in Stockholm. In both Catholic and Protestant churches, boys participate in the procession as well, playing different roles associated with Christmastide, such as that of Saint Stephen or generic gingerbread men, Santa Clauses, or nisses. The celebration of Saint Lucy's Day is said to help one live the winter days with enough light.
A special devotion to Saint Lucy is practised in the Italian regions of Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Trentino-Alto Adige (in Northern Italy), and Sicily (in Southern Italy), as well as in the Croatian coastal region of Dalmatia. In Hungary and Croatia, a popular tradition on Saint Lucy's Day involves planting wheat grains that grow to be several centimetres tall by Christmas Day, representing the Nativity of Jesus.
Saint Lucy's Day is followed by the Ember Days.
Origins An inscription in Syracuse dedicated to Euskia mentioning St. Lucy's Day as a local feast dates back to the fourth century A.D., which states "Euskia, the irreproachable, lived a good and pure life for about 25 years, died on my Saint Lucy's feast day, she for whom I cannot find appropriate words of praise: she was a Christian, faithful, perfection itself, full of thankfulness and gratitude". The Feast of Saint Lucy became a universal feast of the Church in the 6th century, commemorating the Christian martyr's death on 13 December 304 A.D. St. Lucy's day appears in the sacramentary of Gregory, as well as that of Bede, and Christian churches were dedicated to Saint Lucy in Italy as well as in England.
Later, Christian missionaries arrived in Scandinavia to evangelize the local population, carrying the commemoration of Saint Lucy with them, and this "story of a young girl bringing light in the midst of darkness no doubt held great meaning for people who, in the midst of a North Sea December, were longing for the relief of warmth and light". Saint Lucy is one of very few saints still celebrated by the overwhelmingly Lutheran Nordic people Danes; Swedes; Finns and Norwegians but also in the United States and Canada and Italy. Some of the practices associated with the Feast of Saint Lucy may predate the adoption of Christianity in that region, and like much of Scandinavian folklore and even religiosity, is centred on the annual struggle between light and darkness. The Nordic observation of St. Lucy is first attested in the Middle Ages, and continued after the Protestant Reformation in the 1520s and 1530s, although the modern celebration is only about 200 years old. It is likely that tradition owes its popularity in the Nordic countries to the extreme change in daylight hours between the seasons in this region.
13 December
In Scandinavia (until as late as the mid 18th century) this date was the longest night of the year, coinciding with Winter Solstice, due to the Julian Calendar being employed at that time. The same can be seen in the poem "A Nocturnal upon S. Lucy's Day, Being the Shortest Day" by the English poet John Donne.
While this does not hold for the current Gregorian calendar, a discrepancy of eight days would have been the case in the Julian calendar during the 14th century, resulting in Winter solstice falling on 13 December. With the original adoption of the Gregorian calendar in the 16th century the discrepancy was ten days and had increased to 11 days in the 18th century when Scandinavia adopted the new calendar, with the Winter solstice falling on 21 December.
The Winter solstice is not visibly shorter than the several days leading up to and following it and although the actual Julian date of Winter solstice would have been on 15 or 14 December at the time when Christianity was introduced to Scandinavia, 13 December could well have lodged in people's mind as being the shortest day.
The choice of 13 December as Saint Lucy's Day, however, predates the eight-day error of the 14th-century Julian calendar. This date is attested in the pre-Tridentic Monastic calendar, probably going back to the earliest attestations of her life in the sixth and seventh centuries, and it is the date used throughout Europe. So, while the world changed from a Julian to a Gregorian calendar system—and hence acquired a new date for the Winter Solstice—St Lucy's Day was kept on 13 December, and not moved to the 21.
In the Roman Empire, 25 December (in the Julian Calendar) date was celebrated as being the day when the Sun was born, the birthday of Sol Invictus, as can be seen in the Chronography of 354. This date corresponds to the Winter solstice.Christmas (Encyclopædia Britannica) Early Christians considered this a likely date for their saviour's nativity, as it was commonly held that the world was created on Spring equinox (thought to fall on 25 March at the time), and that Christ had been conceived on that date, being born nine months later on Winter solstice.
A Swedish source states that the date of (Winter Solstice, St. Lucia, Lucinatta, Lucia-day, Lussi-mass...) i.e. 13 December, predates the Gregorian which implies that "Lucia's Day" was 13 Dec in the Julian Calendar, which is equal to 21 December in the Gregorian, i.e. now. Same source states use of the name "Little Yule" for the day, that it was among the most important days of the year, that it marked the start of Christmas month, and that with the move to the Gregorian calendar (in Sweden 1753) the date (not the celebration) "completely lost its appropriateness/significance".
Saint Lucy
According to the traditional story, Lucy was born of rich and noble parents in about the year 283. Her father was of Roman origin, but died when she was five years old, leaving Lucy and her mother without a protective guardian. Although no sources for her life story exist other than in hagiographies, St. Lucy, whose name Lucia refers to "light" (Lux, lucis), is known to have been a Sicilian saint who suffered a sad death in Siracusa, Sicily, around AD 310.Hamer, Richard. 2006. Guilte Legende. Oxford University Press for the Early English Text Society. Volume 1, p 25. A devout Christian who had taken a vow of virginity, her mother betrothed her to a pagan. She was seeking help for her mother's long-term illness at the shrine of Saint Agatha when the saint appeared to her in a dream beside the shrine. Saint Agatha told Lucy that the illness would be cured through faith, and Lucy was able to convince her mother to cancel the wedding and donate the dowry to the poor. Enraged, her suitor then reported her to the governor for being a Christian. According to the legend, she was threatened to be taken to a brothel if she did not renounce her Christian beliefs, but they were unable to move her, even with a thousand men and fifty oxen pulling. Instead, they stacked materials for a fire around her and set light to it, but she would not stop speaking, insisting that her death would lessen the fear of it for other Christians and bring grief to non-believers. One of the soldiers stuck a spear through her throat to stop these denouncements, but to no effect. Another gouged out her eyes in an attempt to force her into complacency, but her eyes were miraculously restored. Saint Lucy was able to die only when she was given the Christian Last Rites.Hamer, Richard. 2006. Volume 1, pp 22–25.
In one story, Saint Lucy was working to help Christians hiding in the catacombs during the terror under the Roman Emperor Diocletian, and in order to bring with her as many supplies as possible, she needed to have both hands free. She solved this problem by attaching candles to a wreath on her head.Pantano, Kayla. "Happy Saint Lucy's Day in Italy!", iItaly, 2 December 2018
Saint Lucy is often depicted in art with a palm as the symbol of martyrdom.Hassett, Maurice. "Palm in Christian Symbolism." The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 11. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. 1 December 2017
Celebration Italy Catholic celebrations take place on 13 December and in May. Saint Lucy or Lucia, whose name comes from the Latin word "lux" meaning light, links with this element and with the days growing longer after the Winter solstice.Alio, Jacqueline. "Saint Lucy – Sicily's Most Famous Woman", Best of Sicily Magazine, 2009
St. Lucy is the patron saint of the city of Siracusa, Sicily. On 13 December a silver statue of St. Lucy containing her relics is paraded from the Cathedral of Syracuse to the Basilica of Santa Lucia Outside the Walls, before returning on 20 December. Sicilians recall a legend that holds that a famine ended on her feast day when ships loaded with grain entered the harbour. Here, it is traditional to eat whole grains instead of bread on 13 December. This usually takes the form of cuccìa, a dish of boiled wheat berries often mixed with ricotta and honey, or sometimes served as a savoury soup with beans."Lussekatter and Cuccia for St. Lucy's Day", Smithsonian Magazine, 10 December 2010
St. Lucy is also popular in some regions of North-Eastern Italy, namely Trentino, East Lombardy (Bergamo, Brescia, Cremona, Lodi and Mantua), parts of Veneto (Verona), parts of Emilia-Romagna (Piacenza, Parma, Reggio Emilia and Bologna), and all of Friuli, where she is said to bring gifts to good children and coal to bad ones the night between 12 and 13 December. According to tradition, she arrives in the company of a donkey and her escort, Castaldo. Children are asked to leave some coffee for Lucia, a carrot for the donkey and a glass of wine for Castaldo. They must not watch Santa Lucia delivering these gifts, or she will throw ashes in their eyes, temporarily blinding them.
In the Nordic countries
The celebration of Lucia in its current format began in the 20th century and gained popularity in 1927 after a Stockholm newspaper (Stockholms Dagblad) sponsored a competition to select the official Lucia for the city.
On 13 December, Lucia is venerated in Sweden, Norway,, s.v. "Norway", p. 385 Denmark, and Finland; also among Swedish Americans (cf. subsection for each country below, including )) In the ceremony a girl designated as the Lucia (Lussi, or "Lussi bride") wears a white gown with a red sash and a crown of candles and walks at the head of a procession of women and men holding candles.