St. Lucy's Day Tea Party

With Miss Anni old enough to really partake in and enjoy fun holiday festivities, I decided this was the year to start carrying out some St. Lucy's Day traditions (Dec. 13th), in our own little family. My eldest sister introduced us to this several years ago. She would bake braided bread and bring it to my parent's house, dressed in a white dress (her wedding dress in fact) and red sash. It's been a bummer to miss it as we now live over eight hours of driving away, so it was definitely time to celebrate on our own.

Traditionally, the eldest daughter in the family dresses in white (to represent St. Lucy's purity), with a red sash (to represent her martyrdom) and a crown of candles (to represent St. Lucy's crown of candles that lit her way through the dark forest when she brought bread to the poor).

We included many of these things, but did decide to turn our celebration into a little tea party for Anni and some of her other friends (it just so happens that she has several little friends who are the eldest daughters in their families).

We did make the traditional braided bread; but, in recognizing that I was busy, tired and pregnant, I cheated a little.  I found took some refrigerated cinnamon rolls from the store (the Immaculate brand... yum!), unrolled the rolls, and braided the strands together.  This was much messier than I expected, but the resulted smelled and tasted good, so I'm not complaining in the least.



Another traditional bread for St. Lucy's day are saffron buns (the saffron gives them a golden color as Lucy does, in fact, mean light).  They are supposed to be shaped into an "s" shape, though my digging into why brought me me only that they are supposed to look like rays of light or it was originally the shapes are 12-century fertility symbols associated with a viking goblin queen, whose feast was celebrated with evergreen boughs in midwinter.  We're kind of sticking with the rays of light (again with Lucy meaning light), but I was mostly glad to find any explanation.  Again, I went the easy route (have you seen how expensive saffron is?!) and found some cranberry orange rolls that baked into the perfect color and were relatively easy to unroll and reshape into s shapes.  

The other mamas supplemented our baked goods with all kinds of toddler friendly treats (fruit, cheese, crackers, and quiche) and we had quite a shindig.  While I did make the girls some paper candle wreaths to wear, I also put a few candles in our bread so we could have some real light.  We sang "Happy St. Lucy's Day to you" (to the tune of Happy Birthday, yep) and blew out the candles (it took a little mama help both to make sure no one tried to grab a candle and to get enough power to blow them out).  The toddlers henceforth referred to the bread as cake (well, it is sweet, had frosting, and had candles that we blew out on top) and requested multiple helpings.   

There were two sweet, sweet, baby brothers there as well, though I didn't go so far as to make them star boy hats... four months is a little young to worry about being a part of the festivities.  (I'm sure they mostly hoped that the crazy girls wouldn't include them in their partying.)

We got one quick picture of our wild ones in their crowns (they were mostly destroyed five minutes after this picture... except for Anni, she was adamant that she keep wearing hers).  I think that's the beauty of a quick n' easy craft, I wasn't too worried about the crown's destruction since they took me about 20 minutes to make.

We even had our very own Lucy celebrating her name day!  She mostly just liked watching the two oldest girls get into trouble. 

Four little girls running wild around our little apartment was pretty crazy, but completely worth it to make a fun little memory celebrating our Catholic heritage.  I also printed a few coloring pages for the girls, but completely forget them in the insanity of their running through the apartment.

When Daddy got home and asked Anni how her tea party went, she told him, "All my friends came!" and proceeded to list off who was there.  I think that's a pretty good conclusion for a two-year old.

Prayer to Saint Lucy

Saint Lucy, your beautiful name signifies light. By the light of faith which God bestowed upon you, increase and preserve this light in my soul so that I may avoid evil, be zealous in the performance of good works, and abhor nothing so much as the blindness and the darkness of evil and of sin.  By your intercession with God, obtain for me perfect vision for my bodily eyes and the grace to use them for God's greater honor and glory and the salvation of all men.  Saint Lucy, virgin and martyr, hear my prayers and obtain my petitions. Amen.

Visit the 2012 Santa Lucia Day Link-up at Catholic Cuisine 

to see more Saint Lucy Day Celebrations!