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, who according to legend brought food and aid to Christians hiding in the Roman catacombs, wearing a candle lit wreath on her head to light her way and leave her hands free to carry as much food as possible. Her feast day, which coincided with the shortest day of the year prior to calendar reforms, is 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 Christmas Day.
Saint Lucy's Day is celebrated most widely in Scandinavia and in Italy, with each emphasising a different aspect of her story. In Scandinavia, where Lucy is called Santa/Sankta Lucia, she is represented as a lady 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 Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Swedish-speaking regions of 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. 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 the north of the country, and Sicily, in the south, 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.
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 centered 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 9 December.