Lucia History

Tomorrow is Saint Lucia Day! Watch the video below to learn more about Saint Lucia and traditions in Sweden and here at Augustana.

[@AnnoyedKitten]

This showed up in my "recommended videos", probably because I just posted how to bake Lussekatter. How nice to see a really nice video explaining our strange Swedish traditions. :) //Agnes

[@antiwacks4017]

Lucia is actually a thousands of years old pagan scandinavian tradition. A celebration of the return of light, in northern Scandinavia, after over a month of darkness. In Sweden we still call it lusse or lussi (ljósi in old norse) which means light. The church later made it a christian tradition, as they did with Midsommar, Jul and so on.

[@JaneDoe-wd5zk]

Are there any prayers to Lucia

[@antiwacks4017]

@@JaneDoe-wd5zk Not that I know of

[@AnnoyedKitten]

Not really. This is a very common misconception, spread happily by the 19th century academics that wanted everything to be Old Norse and pre-christian and hopefully also fertiliy cults. I usually call them "sexually frustrated white men that had nothing better to do". ;) Later studies have discard this idea though. Yule is form pre-christian era, but not the Lucia tradtion. The old Yule starting at the 13th december before we where Christian (which then changed it to 24th because of a change of calendar) but the Lucia figure has not any sources at all until late 18th cent. The earliest mention of her at all is 1764. Lussi or Lusse has nothing to do with Ljosi, it comes from Lucifer and that is a medieval tradition, also borrowed from Germany. Before there was a Lucia, students went around dressed up as different characters, singing and begging for booze and food and it is said that Lusse, aka Lucifer, had great power over this night, since all bigger yearly celebrations usually are connected to folkmagic. Folkmagic does not necessarily has anything to do with old heathen times either. The Lucia character showed up as a way for the upper class to stop the rather noisy bawling of drunk students outside their windows and was also borrowed from Germany. //A Swedish ethnologist and historian.

[@heartartg9207]

Du skojar va? Lucia namnet är ju från cicilien och var kristen. Har inget med Skandinavien att göra. Hon var helig som ville leva för Gud.

[@lalaloveyou5186]

This is a very informative video thank you. As far as letting dudes take the role of Lucia all I have to say is seriously? Why do dudes need to have their hand in everything? I’m a fan of dudes but they need to know when to stop and just let us have something that is all our own besides childbirth