My first Lucia

It's Lucia on the 13th of December in Sweden.
This day was regarded as the shortest day of the year in former times. The celebration can be traced back to St. Lucia, a martyr who lived on Sicily in the 3th century.
Nowadays Lucia comes as the "Queen of lights" in a white dress with a crown of candles. She is accompanied by lightbearers and they sing the Lucia-song and some other songs to announce the returning of the light and to herald Christmas time. This day is obviously very important for the kids and it's celebrated in many families in the morning at home, in day-care and kindergarten, but as well in schools and at work.

For my first Lucia, Richard and I went to see a Lucia-concert in a big church. "En resa från mörker till ljus" - A journey from darkness to light.
There were two choirs, one dressed in black and one dressed in white and they started with a few songs in the dark church, apart from each other, until Lucia came in with the lightcrown. The singers in white followed her with candles and they lit all the candles in the church and mingled among the dark choir. They even lowered down two huge candelabra from the ceiling to light their candles, what had quite an dramatic effect.


It was a beautiful concert and I had goose pimples several times, sitting in this church that was only lit up by candles and listening to all these nice songs.
I really liked the Lucia-day and I am happy to add this celebration to the special days in the year.
It's nice to celebrate te returning of the light. It's kind of comforting to know that the days become longer again, even though it's not very noticable for a while. But in the meantime we just light some more candles to make the darkness a bit more cosy :-)