One of my favourite Norwegian/Scandinavian pre-Christmas traditions!
Notes:
In Scandinavia (including parts of Finland), schoolchildren dress in white and take part in candlelit musical processions.
Saint Lucia is literally named after Saint Lucia/ Saint Lucy, and the day is their national day, with a number of related festivities.
In Italy, the day is celebrated in several regions, in different ways.
I considered adding Croatia and Hungary, as these lands too have traditions associated with Saint Lucia.
Please point out any I have missed 🙂
Funny that the Saint Lucia choir of my school came while Looking at this post
We just attended our daughter’s procession for Santa Lucia at Barnehage.
If someone could briefly explain the history of this tradition in Norge I would really appreciate it.
I just ate a lussekatt, life is good 😇
i assume the arrow is pointing to saint lucia
The norwegian tradition is really a pagan one. “Lussinatt” were originaly celebrated on the 12. December. As with a lot of christmas-stuff it got changed when the christians took over. Jul and Lussinatt has nothing to do with Christmas or St.Lucys day. It just fell together.
For some reason this map made me laugh. Happy Saint Lucia’s Day everybody 🙂
How did we end up adopting a Italian tradition and where do the Saffron buns fit into the equation? I cannot find the history behind this.
Edit: According to Wikipedia Christian and Pagan traditions were (once again) jumbled up and resulted in a pseudoreligious celebration. Still don’t understand how the St Lucy celebration came to be so significant. There are plenty of other saints that aren’t celebrated.
Also in croatia ! We plant wheat seeds in a lil bowl today and if the wheat grows nicely it means that house will have a bountiful harvest next year.
Saint Lucy (283–304), was a wealthy young girl who lived in Siracusa, Sicily, at the times of Diocletian persecutions and consecrated herself to God, refusing to marry a pagan and becoming a Christian martyr.
Her would-be husband reported her as a Christian to the governor of Syracuse, Sicily. There are different versions of her story, one claims that the guards sent to punish her were miraculously unable to move her or burn her, took out her eyes with a fork. In another version, Lucia’s would-be husband admired her eyes, so she tore them out and gave them to him, saying, “Now let me live to God”.
Her feast day is celebrated on the 13th of December and given her martyrdom and her name (which derives from lux, lucis “light”) she is the patron saint of those who are blind and, In art, her eyes sometimes appear on a tray she is holding.
Ah, yes.
“SANKT ‘A LUCIIAAA DREIT OPPI LIIIAAA”
Followed by the endless snickering of my fellow 2nd grade classmates
Well, in Italy it is celebrated but it is not a public holiday. And we have a lot of public holidays (for example 8 december is Immaculate Conception Day and it is a public holiday).
St.Lucia dayh is not recognized equally in all the Italian regions.
For example, I essentially never heard about it until I was an adult, while a coworker comes from a family where gifts were given to kids on St.Lucia day instead of Christmas.
I’m going to go on a limb and say that the islands in the Caribbean are the former Norway-Denmark slave colonies (locally sourced from our slave trading posts in modern-day Ghana)
*Santa Lucia*
*Skeit oppi lia*
*Så kom’en Rune*
*Å sleika det brune*
I just celebrated it for the first time. I’m American. Due to disability I couldn’t make the pastries from scratch and had to do an alternative. I showed my mom some videos the other day. And served her breakfast in bed.
17 comments
One of my favourite Norwegian/Scandinavian pre-Christmas traditions!
Notes:
In Scandinavia (including parts of Finland), schoolchildren dress in white and take part in candlelit musical processions.
Saint Lucia is literally named after Saint Lucia/ Saint Lucy, and the day is their national day, with a number of related festivities.
In Italy, the day is celebrated in several regions, in different ways.
I considered adding Croatia and Hungary, as these lands too have traditions associated with Saint Lucia.
Please point out any I have missed 🙂
Funny that the Saint Lucia choir of my school came while Looking at this post
We just attended our daughter’s procession for Santa Lucia at Barnehage.
If someone could briefly explain the history of this tradition in Norge I would really appreciate it.
I just ate a lussekatt, life is good 😇
i assume the arrow is pointing to saint lucia
The norwegian tradition is really a pagan one. “Lussinatt” were originaly celebrated on the 12. December. As with a lot of christmas-stuff it got changed when the christians took over. Jul and Lussinatt has nothing to do with Christmas or St.Lucys day. It just fell together.
For some reason this map made me laugh. Happy Saint Lucia’s Day everybody 🙂
How did we end up adopting a Italian tradition and where do the Saffron buns fit into the equation? I cannot find the history behind this.
Edit: According to Wikipedia Christian and Pagan traditions were (once again) jumbled up and resulted in a pseudoreligious celebration. Still don’t understand how the St Lucy celebration came to be so significant. There are plenty of other saints that aren’t celebrated.
Also in croatia ! We plant wheat seeds in a lil bowl today and if the wheat grows nicely it means that house will have a bountiful harvest next year.
Saint Lucy (283–304), was a wealthy young girl who lived in Siracusa, Sicily, at the times of Diocletian persecutions and consecrated herself to God, refusing to marry a pagan and becoming a Christian martyr.
Her would-be husband reported her as a Christian to the governor of Syracuse, Sicily. There are different versions of her story, one claims that the guards sent to punish her were miraculously unable to move her or burn her, took out her eyes with a fork. In another version, Lucia’s would-be husband admired her eyes, so she tore them out and gave them to him, saying, “Now let me live to God”.
Her feast day is celebrated on the 13th of December and given her martyrdom and her name (which derives from lux, lucis “light”) she is the patron saint of those who are blind and, In art, her eyes sometimes appear on a tray she is holding.
Ah, yes.
“SANKT ‘A LUCIIAAA DREIT OPPI LIIIAAA”
Followed by the endless snickering of my fellow 2nd grade classmates
Well, in Italy it is celebrated but it is not a public holiday. And we have a lot of public holidays (for example 8 december is Immaculate Conception Day and it is a public holiday).
St.Lucia dayh is not recognized equally in all the Italian regions.
For example, I essentially never heard about it until I was an adult, while a coworker comes from a family where gifts were given to kids on St.Lucia day instead of Christmas.
I’m going to go on a limb and say that the islands in the Caribbean are the former Norway-Denmark slave colonies (locally sourced from our slave trading posts in modern-day Ghana)
*Santa Lucia*
*Skeit oppi lia*
*Så kom’en Rune*
*Å sleika det brune*
I just celebrated it for the first time. I’m American. Due to disability I couldn’t make the pastries from scratch and had to do an alternative. I showed my mom some videos the other day. And served her breakfast in bed.
*Saint Lucia*
*Shat up in the hillside*
*When she was finished*
*It smelled fucking awful.*
Croatia also