It's Flaming Wreath Head Girl Day!

Tuomo writes: December 13th is Luciadagen, or St. Lucia Day. For most Finns (including me), it’s just another day in December, but for the Finnish Swedes, a minority that forms approximately 6% of all Finns, it’s a big thing, possibly their biggest cultural event of the year. Needless to say, this day is a big event in Sweden too, and as I came to learn earlier this week at the Scandinavian Centre, in Denmark too.

As someone whose mother tongue is not Swedish, growing up I never registered Luciadagen in any other way than finding an image of a blond girl wearing a wreath of lit candles on her head in my Christmas calendars. In the Finnish Swedish community on the other hand, depending on the family, one of the girls in the family would be St. Lucia, and she would wear a white robe and have a wreath with lit candles on her head. Then everybody would sing Sankta Lucia, either in Swedish or Italian, which all about asking St. Lucia to bring light into the darkest time of the year in Scandinavia. Ask Monica (or even Kai) for more sordid details :-)


Come to think of it... I've never had any fantasies about being a Lucia Maid, but I wonder what Dave would think about me bringing him breakfast to bed (a twist to the tradition!) wearing a white robe and a wreath of candles on my head... He'd probably yell me for getting candle wax on the carpet and trying to burn down the house :-)

Here are two not-so-well made clips of the Lucia Maid procession in Helsinki:

Clip 1

Clip 2

For those of you who care, the language you actually hear in these clips is not Finnish but (Finnish) Swedish!

And here’s a clip so that you can get a better idea of the song as well as see a genuine Flaming Wreath Head Girl:



And just in case you hadn’t figured it out, it’s Dave, who’s 25% finlandsvenska, who refers to St. Lucia Day as Flaming Wreath Head Girl Day. Technically speaking, it's more his heritage than mine! :-)