St. Lucia Festival

(Turn off my playlist on the sidebar at right if you want to view the two short videos at the end of this post.)

Today, December 13, is the feast of St. Lucy in the Catholic Church. And it is one of the few Saint days that is still observed in Scandinavia. In traditional Scandinavian celebrations, Saint Lucia comes as a young woman with candlelight and sweets.


This past weekend we attended a St. Lucia Pageant. Ray's family is Swedish, and his cousin's daughter (Wendy's daughter, Heather Marie) was St. Lucia at the Annual Lucia Festival. We've been going to the Lucia Pageant for a few years now, but it was especially exciting this year with Heather Marie as Lucia:




After the pageant in church, we also enjoyed some traditional Swedish songs and folk dancing performed in traditional costume:



The costume that Heather is wearing belonged to Ray's grandmother on his mother's side.

(Heather with Ray's Mom, Helena)

Ray's cousin Wendy made us a delicious Swedish pankakke, and his cousin Heidi made a wonderful raisin cake, which we got to enjoy along with other Swedish cakes, cookies, coffee, and Glogg. There were also tables set up with crafts available for purchase.




After the performance everyone was invited up to participate and to learn a few of the dances. Mia really enjoyed that, and even Rudy got into the act!





Here's a video of Heather singing 'Oh Holy Night' in Swedish. I never understood why they would choose such a hard song for these young girls to sing. I've seen professional singers have trouble hitting the notes in this song. But I think Heather did very well here:










Here you can see Mia having lots of fun with the Swedish folk dancing, along with her Mommy (Lori), Ray's sister (Susie), his niece (Erika), and his other niece and her husband (Jill and Rudy), and his cousins (Heidi and Wendy):