Santa Lucia VII

Happy St. Lucy's day! This year definitely had to be the easy route. We are running on empty with our darling boy coming two weeks into the school year and all that entails, as well as a week of school concerts and dance demonstrations on top of the normal hustle and bustle. Daniel grabbed two cans of orange rolls to reshape (they look like the traditional lussekatters, but definitely aren't, obviously). The girls bounced out of bed and brought the rolls in to Mlada's room. She didn't budge, even when we sang. ha! She was excited when she woke up about an hour later to see that her sisters had left her some rolls, and insisted that we light the candles and sing for each roll. Jude celebrated by getting a good stare down in with the tree lights.

St. Lucy, pray for us!

Our sixth Santa Lucia Day

Our St. Lucy's day this year was a test of stamina.  My usual helper is dealing with a cough and the asthma issues that brings with it, so I was on my own when I hopped out of bed at a quarter to five to start the dough rising for St. Lucy's crown. Our lussekatters were yet again a product of the refrigerated dough section of the store, but I did manage to make our braided bread from scratch (thank goodness for this really easy recipe!)

Because Anni needed to be to school early for her class' recitation of The Night Before Christmas, she wore the rather floppy crown (I've got to figure out how to fix that!) but no traditional white dress and red sash this year. I am looking forward to 2020 (yes, I looked it up) when we can have a weekend St. Lucy's day to throw another tea party! 

Daniel is actually the first one of us up usually, so this was a rare chance to let him "sleep in" a little. (I still refuse to refer to 6:30 as sleeping in, but it *is* a lot later that his usual 5:45!)

Then, because we had heard Mlada start to stir anyway, we headed into the little girls' room, where Mlada immediately burst into tears and Colette jumped up to blow out the candles and asked, "Is it my birthday?!"

Here's to a very sweet St. Lucy's day to you all. My she ask Christ to bring light to your darkness.

St. Lucy's Day V

Our Santa Lucia traditions has had to adjust a bit with Anni being in school. While we are looking forward to the day St. Lucy's Day will be on a weekend again and we can resume our community tea parties, we don't want Anni to miss out, so we have actually become a bit more traditional in how we go about things.

Anni and I woke in the wee hours to make some lussekatter... or rather some canned orange rolled re-shaped to look like lussekatter, because sometimes you've just got to do what you've got to do, and saffron is not always in the grocery or liturgical celebration budget.

Then we snuck and sang to Daddy, who then came out and read our St. Lucy book to the girls before we had to get Anni off to school.

Simple, yes, but I'm glad we still managed to keep our tradition somewhat. It's one of my favorites!

St. Lucy, pray for us!

Santa Lucia Tea Party IV

Santa Lucia Day! The wonderful thing about having this tradition pretty well established (four years is established, right?) is that it pretty much plans itself. At 38 weeks pregnant, that's almost a necessity. Things were simple and small this year as we had three families who ended up staying home at the last minute due to illness. The three mamas who were there (including me) are all rounding the end of their pregnancies, so while we missed the other families, we were grateful their germs stayed home!

We had the quintessential white dress with red sash and candle crown for our eldest, and a white(ish) dress and sweet headband for her little handmaid.

I stuck with my stand by braided cinnamon bread and reshaped orange rolls from the refrigerated section as our "lussekatters". "Tea" was some yummy juice, and we were set to go. I love how easy it is to please a group of little girls and honor a wonderful Saint.  

St. Lucy, pray for us!

St. Lucy's Day III

This past Saturday, we had our third annual St. Lucy's Day tea party. (You can see the first year here, and the second year here.) Because it was a Saturday, it was the largest group we've had yet, especially as this was the first time Daddies came along.

The girls wore sweet white dresses with red sashes (or some variation of) and made their own Santa Lucia crowns with (paper) candles. They were quite proud of them this year! Colette took to wearing hers upside down... so it's looking a little forlorn, but, still, so much fun. We attempted a Star boy crown for our one young man, but I had forgotten the right shape for it, so maybe next year!

I made a braided cinnamon bread (to represent St. Lucia's crown) and lussekatter (saffron buns). I did manage the cinnamon bread homemade... so I am quite proud of that. The "saffron" buns are actually pillsbury orange rolls (we also really like the Immaculata brand, but they were out). Right color, and nice and simple so I didn't make myself entirely crazy getting ready for something that is supposed to be a celebration. I bought a new book this year, Lucia, Saint of Light. I love it! It explained a few finer points of the celebration I didn't know, and has some recipes as well as a St. Lucia song in the back. I definitely recommend it for any of you that want to know more about the celebration! 

 While we had discovered the song in the back of the book, we stuck with the simple "Happy St. Lucy's Day to you", for the sake of including everyone in the singing. The littles quite enjoyed getting to blow out candles, eat yummy food, and chase each other around. Happy St. Lucy's Day!

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.

2nd Annual St. Lucy's Day Tea Party!

Happy feast of St. Lucy!  We continued our family tradition this year and had a little tea party with a few of Anni's sweet little friends (and their mamas, whom I just happen to be friends with, too, of course).  And my sweet girls?  Aren't they about as darling as they come? 

This year I actually homemade some braided cinnamon bread (no saffron rolls, two loaves of the one baked good and a breakfast casserole was enough for me!)  It was yummy (and pretty... as long as you don't look where I tried to join the braid!)  

We lit some candles (Lucy does mean "light" after all) and sang "Happy St. Lucy Day to you" (yes, to the tune of "Happy Birthday").  I had also picked up some little battery operated candles in the dollar aisle, so every kid had their own candle to take home.

Oh, and this darling little sunshine?  Isn't that smile just the best?!

Happy St. Lucy's Day!

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!