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CHRISTMAS SPIRIT 
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Lucia - The Christ child as saint By Jan-Öjvind Swahn
Lucia is celebrated on many different levels. First there is the official one. A local newspaper organizes a "Lucia competition". That is, the readers select one of a number of girls from photographs (long, preferably blond hair is often one of the main qualifications!). The chosen one becomes the star of the Lucia procession which moves along many a High Street, though the custom was more widespread 30 years ago. She also puts in appearances at pensioners' homes and hospitals, for example. Her attendants are the other competitors, and together they sing the traditional Lucia song while processing with their hands devoutly pressed together in front of them. Lucia wears a white, full-length chemise, with a red ribbon round her waist and a wreath of lingonberry sprigs on her head. The wreath has holders for real candles or - a safer option - battery-powered ones, to give the effect of a halo. Often her retinue also includes "star boys", who really belong to quite a different Yuletide context. Together they form a choir with a repertoire of Christmas songs and carols. The second kind of Lucia celebration does not differ outwardly from the first but takes place in more private surroundings - in a school, on club premises or in a parish hall, in which case Lucia coffee is served, together with the saffron-flavoured buns known as "Lucia cats" (lussekatt), the ingenious shapes of which are derived from the distinctive bread of earlier Christmas celebrations in Sweden. The third way of celebrating Lucia is in the family. Mothers or older brothers and sisters get up early and make up a tray of "Lucia cats" whereupon the youngest female member of the family takes the part of Lucia and, as a general rule, the only person still asleep - the father of the family - is woken by the strains of the Lucia song. What were the origins of the peculiar festival in the winter darkness? It has nothing to do with the Italian saint. Strange as it may seem, Lucia is a manifestation os quite a different medieval saint, Nicholas. When the Reformation came to Northern Europe, the adoration of saints was prohibited, but some of them, and especially Nicholas, the generous patron saint of schoolchildren, were not easy to do without. So the Germans replaced the bearded saint and bishop with the Christ child and transferred the distribution of gifts from the feast of St Nicholas, on 6th December, to Christmas. During the 17th and 18th centuries the Christ child, represented by a girl dressed in a white linen tunic and with a candle wreath in her hair, played this part in Germany and also in German or German-influenced circles in Sweden. But in Sweden it failed to take root as a part of Christmas celebrations and was transferred to Lucia Day, because early that morning it had been the custom of the Swedes, ever since medieval times, to eat and drink anything up to seven breakfasts in a row, to prepare themselves for the Christmas fast, which began at sunrise on the morning of the 13th December. In the manor houses of Western Sweden during the 18th century, the German Christ child was transformed into a kind of hostess of these festivities. She then assumed the very apt present-day saint's name (Lucia being connected with lux, the Latin for light). In the 19th century the Schnaps and pork gave way to more Spartan fare: coffee and "Lucia cats". It was not until the end of the 19th century that Lucia became known elsewhere in Sweden, and Stockholm held its first Lucia procession in 1927. Such are the vagaries of Tradition! |
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