Satanism and Sicilian Saints

When December 13:th rolls around, Swedes go into Lucia mode. What happens is that women in nightgowns (plus some sidekicks like ginger-bread men and little santas) come singing, and one particular chick has candles in her hair and is "Lucia".




This Bizzare custom is very strange, and it is actually so strange that even us Swedes don't really know where the heck we came up with it exactly.

Actually one big thing almost every year on TV is some historian trying to untangle the mess that is our "Lucia" festivity, which all come back to maybe it being originally a pagan or even satanistic ritual originally, since there are lots of word with the prefix Lusse- connected to the festivity ("Lussebulle", a special type of bun, e.t.c.), which sounds bit more "Lucifer" than "Lucia" plus is said to preceed the Christening of Sweden.

The real why's of how a particular Saint became important to Sweden is something you'd have to Google for coz frankly, I don't have a clue.

No Lucia festivity is complete without the song "Sankta Lucia". However this song choice has two particular quirks:

First, the actual original italian song is actually about the village of Lucia, and has nothing at all to do with the Swedish lyrics in any way, shape or form (which talks about a chick "bearing light", coming 11 days before Christmas saying, "yo, folks, X-mas is coming")

The second is that nobody thinks of this as a religious song per so. Now, while the title means "Saint Lucia", the word "Sankta" for "Sainted" is so baroque and ancient (the normal Swedish word would be "Helgon") that most people don't even understand it's meaning, and actually think it's the chicks name. If you ask any Swedish child what "Sankta" means, they'll say "It's Lucias first name".

For us, Lucia is about a "chick bearing light" that comes 11 days before X-mas, and... passes out ginger snaps. And coffee.

An amusing detail is that they play out the Lucia festivity early for the Nobel Prize winners (the Prize is always given Dec 10:th) and it is always funny to see their reaction, noted was literature Prize winnder Dario Fo's comment "I've died and gone to heaven". He probably never had a bunch of Swedish blondes in nightgown coming into his bedroom in the morning with coffee before.

To us, it happens every December 13:th.

I'll write a little more about this bizzarro event later.

/Z

Swedes - the Advent Children

Sunday was "1st Advent" in Sweden. That's the 4:th sunday before Christmas.

Swedes have a bizzare relationship to Christmas. It's one of the biggest "feasts" of the year to a Swede, but Christ is not the main character (we get to who is later).

Christmas is a not a religious feast to most Swedes. This is because everyone stole our Midvinterblot anyway!!!.

Yes, the Christmas you all celebrate is our old pagan viking mid-winter party! And just because some guy comes walking into our country with a big X we aren't going to change our partying habits! ;)

Yes, there is a certain (limited) amount of lip-service paid to "Christ", and some church-related stuff, like "julottan", which is going really stupidly early to church on Christmas morning. Mostly the older generations actually do that, and not so much for religious reasons as due to "it's what you do on Christmas morn'".

Thats us in a nutshell, Swedes, we do stuff coz "that's what you do", not due to some massive underlying belief of some sort. Tradition.

And for Christmas we have a lot of tradition, because it's a mess. We are going to come to some of that later.

The first "christmas related" thing (apart from putting up some early christmas decorations, like the christmas curtains) is the four-candle "Adventsljusstake", i.e. a special candle-holder-thingamabob which takes 4 candles, and for each sunday-before-xmas-eve (we celebrate Christmas Eve, not Christmas Day, btw) we light one candle.

So first one,
then next week two,
then the next week three
and the week after that all four

...and just like those sentences generate a staggered appearance, so does the "Adventsljusstake", on Christmas Eve, if there is anything left of the 1st candle, you'll see a staircase looking contraption with a really short candle, a slightly longer, another even longer, and one longer than that.



Bizarre.

And we are big on candles.

I read an article by a Swede that was living temporarily in Japan and invited some japanese friends for a Christmas dinner. They had lit the entire aparment with candles, and the Japanese came in and wonder "oh, is the power out? Want help finding the fusebox". LOL. Also the Japanese guy saw the two lite candles in the "Adventsljusstake" and took out his lighter and lit the remaining two! TEH BLASPHEMER!

More Bizzare Swedish Christmas ritual to follow, next week.... when we mix Satanism with a Sicilian Saint, and setting fire to hair with Ginger Snaps.

Stay Tuned.

/Z