Happy St. Lucia’s Day

St. Lucia’s Day is a mostly Scandinavian holiday.  Though St. Lucia was actually Italian.  We have Danish ancestry so we love celebrating Scandinavian things to help us remember our roots.  I love the thought that in Denmark they started celebrating this holiday to bring light in a time of darkness, in 1944.  This was a protest to the German occupation!  Danish history during that time is fantastic!  You should read about how the tiny country of Denmark banded together to protect their people.  They did not see Danish Jews as anything other than Danes!  AMAZING!! 

 

The above picture was one of our star boys in our St. Lucia’s Day procession last year.  In traditional St. Lucia’s Day parades you carry an actual candle, this was our safe version!

The holiday tradition is to have a parade where one unmarried girl gets chosen to wear a crown of candles and comes bearing saffron buns.  The children in the procession all wear white with a red sash.

In our version we sing the traditional Danish song and some boys even wear a Nisse Cap (the red one in the picture, not the blue sesame street cap worn by my teenage nephew!).

 

Papa (my Father) goes along with our procession to help the children sing the song (they have written versions they are reading from in the picture above).  We get together with my siblings and all my Nephews to do this at my Mom and Dad’s house.  These pictures were from our St. Lucia’s Day festivities last year.  We are all gearing up for our celebration today after the kids get out of school!  I have the only girls in the family so my oldest daughter always gets to be our St. Lucia girl!

 

I hope you might try some version of this to help your kids learn about other cultures.  I always loved learning about how other countries celebrate Christmas!

 

What traditions do you have that are from other countries?  I’d love to hear about them or even give me a link!

 

Rebecca