The Bringer of Light

Yesterday the 13th of Dec was Lucia, the day commemorating St. Lucia. One girl is chosen to be Lucia from a vote, in Luleå of readers of the Kuriren newspaper. The Lucia gets to wear a crown of candles, and processes into a darkened room. You can read about the saint on Wikipedia.

She is often associated with bringing light or sight to people, and her saint's day used to be celebrated on the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year. It is now brought forward a couple of weeks.

The Lucia wears a white robe and a crown of candles on her head, and processes into the room with other girls and star boys, singing the traditional Italian tune Santa Lucia. You have all heard the tune before, usually in films where stripey shirt clad Venetian gondoliers are singing and delivering people across the canals. If I could get quicktime not to crash, Id probably post a link here.

At uni, it is time to drink the traditional glögg, a type of hot mulled wine spiced with cinnamon and drunk with slivered almonds and raisins. Also on offer are saffron buns (Lussebullar), which should be eaten on this day, and gingerbread buscuits.

The Uni Lucia was, I guess, chosen from the Aurora choir, which entered the dining room at 7:30am when it was still well and truly dark outside. The choir sang christmas carols for half an hour, a mix of standard English ones and Swedish ones. Later on in the day apparently the kids from the local primary school also do a tour through the 'grown ups' school, which is a lot of fun for them, but I didnt manage to catch that.

Another Christmas tradition in our department is the traditional Allan glögg, which is made by one of the technicians in the department, and contains a liberal dash, or spets, of homebrew. Now thats a warming drink!

So until the actual festivities of Christmas, on the 24th, there are no specific Christmas events left. Unless you count preparing for Christmas by having a half day on the 23rd. Or preparing for the half day by having a full day holiday on the 22nd. And winding down for that on the 21st...