{"id":125,"date":"2008-12-12T12:00:59","date_gmt":"2008-12-12T16:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/?p=125"},"modified":"2008-12-12T12:00:59","modified_gmt":"2008-12-12T16:00:59","slug":"sankta-lucia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/sankta-lucia\/","title":{"rendered":"Sankta Lucia!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tomorrow\u2019s the celebration of <strong>St. Lucia<\/strong> (no, I am NOT talking about that happy island in the Caribbean) but unfortunately, I am not in Sweden and will have to miss it this year. Bummer.<\/p>\n<p>So what\u2019s the big deal with Saint Lucy\u2019s celebration? You know the stuff you hear about Swedes parading with candles (lit candles, no less!) stuck to their heads? Well, St. Lucy\u2019s is the day to do that.<\/p>\n<p>The lady is one of the very few Catholic saints that are celebrated by the Lutheran church. Back in the olden days, her feast coincided with the longest, darkest day of the year, but then when the calendar changed from the unreformed Julian to what we have now, her day ended up on December 13th. The story of St. Lucy is rather gory and I\u2019m not going to tell it here, but if you\u2019re into that sort of stuff \u2013 check it out. What you do need to know is that in Latin, her name shares the root with \u201clux\u201d meaning \u201clight\u201d and that\u2019s the excuse for the candles in the hair that are being sported on St. Lucy\u2019s day in Scandinavia.<\/p>\n<p>Ok, so how does it work really? In English, I think you could say this would be a musical pageant of sorts. In Swedish it is know as \u201c<strong>luciat\u00e5g<\/strong>\u201d (Lucia train) and it\u2019s taken very seriously. It\u2019s done all over the place \u2013 from kindergartens to churches to shopping malls. And of course, the star of the show is the girl (or a young woman) with the candles on her head.<\/p>\n<p>Just watch the clip below, you\u2019ll see what I mean.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Friedmans luciat\u00e5g\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hi2J0ihhhsw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>And here\u2019s a recap in Swedish:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Luciat\u00e5gets viktigaste person \u00e4r lucian. Lucian \u00e4r en en flicka eller ung kvinna. Under int\u00e5get g\u00e5r lucian fr\u00e4mst. I sitt f\u00f6lje har hon vanligen 4-20 t\u00e4rnor som ocks\u00e5 \u00e4r flickor eller unga kvinnor och som vanligen f\u00f6ljer lucian parvis. Ibland f\u00f6rekommer \u00e4ven stj\u00e4rngossar som \u00e4r pojkar eller unga m\u00e4n.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If I remember correctly, there are three different version of the Lucia song, but the version that I am most familiar with is this:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Natten g\u00e5r tunga fj\u00e4t<br \/>\nrunt g\u00e5rd och stuga.<br \/>\nKring jord som sol\u00b4n f\u00f6rg\u00e4t<br \/>\nskuggorna ruva.<br \/>\nD\u00e5 i v\u00e5rt m\u00f6rka hus<br \/>\nstiger med t\u00e4nda ljus,<br \/>\nSankta Lucia, Sankta Lucia.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Natten \u00e4r stor och stum<br \/>\nnu h\u00f6r det svingar<br \/>\ni alla tysta rum<br \/>\nsus som av vingar.<br \/>\nSe, p\u00e5 v\u00e5r tr\u00f6skel st\u00e5r<br \/>\nvitkl\u00e4dd, med ljus i h\u00e5r.<br \/>\nSankta Lucia, Sankta Lucia.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>M\u00f6rkret skall flykta snart<br \/>\nur jordens dalar.<br \/>\nS\u00e5 hon ett underbart<br \/>\nord till oss talar.<br \/>\nDagen skall \u00e5ter ny<br \/>\nstiga ur rosig sky.<br \/>\nSankta Lucia, Sankta Lucia.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Have a safe St. Lucy\u2019s celebration! Remember \u2013 the lady brings light with her. Soon the days will start getting longer again!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tomorrow\u2019s the celebration of St. Lucia (no, I am NOT talking about that happy island in the Caribbean) but unfortunately, I am not in Sweden and will have to miss it this year. Bummer. So what\u2019s the big deal with Saint Lucy\u2019s celebration? You know the stuff you hear about Swedes parading with candles (lit&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/sankta-lucia\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[3389,3417],"class_list":["post-125","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-culture","tag-sankta-lucia","tag-st-lucia"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}