Tuesday, December 13, 2011

December 13th - Saint Lucia

...or perhaps you know her as Saint Lucy?


For us her name symbolises light ("lys") during these short, dark winter days (sunrises about 9am and decends about 4pm) which is why you a lot of places will see young girls/ladies all dressed in white gowns holding a lit candle in their hands singing a praise for Saint Lucia while walking slowly. The girl in front of the cortege is wearing a green wreath with 4-5 lights on her head depicting Saint Lucia.



In Denmark the tradition dates back to WWII: inspired by the Swedish tradition, the Danish people started this as a silent protest against the Germans, who occupied our country for little more than 5 years.

Whooops how did my picture end up here ;o)

At my old school, it was tradition for all the girls in the 5th grade to be part of a Saint Lucia cortege walking through the school ending up at a common room - when we reached the common room the whole school started singing Christmas carrols. Most Danish schools have their traditions on these day - all with Saint lucia corteges.

Apologies for the poor photo quality of the Saint Lucia cortege - pictures taken mid 80s by someone not very interested in photography - and recently scanned in order to get them in "digital" version.

2 comments:

Birdie said...

Love this Legs! Thanks for saving me the question - a cutie for sure ;)

Kim@stuffcould.... said...

I like this tradition...beautiful. I know the scanned in photo thing...They did not have the quality back then but yours look great anyway.