Saint Lucia Day

Today we celebrate Saint Lucia. With a Scandinavian background on my mother's side, I grew up having a candle lit breakfast on December 13th since the day I was born, and my mother grew up the same, and her father prior. A long standing tradition and I have passed it forward to my children.

You can click on the above link to get the history and meaning of Saint Lucia, but the tradition is the oldest daughter wears a wreath of lit candles on her head and serves breakfast of Lussekatt (St. Lucia Buns) in bed to her parents. However, growing up we skipped that part, and ate our breakfast at the dinning room table with a Christmas Tree candle centerpiece that housed 12 lit white candles.

Complete with Lussekatt, bing cherries, granola, and orange juice we would wake early to eat by candle light and listen to Christmas music. Next to our plates would be a small, white tissue papered box with a tree ornament inside from my parents. The ornament would symbolize something about my brother and I for that year. While it may have been a simple event, meaning no additional symbolic or special event for the rest of the day, it was always a favorite of mine.

My dad continued to make the Lussekatt and my mom continued to buy the tree ornaments after we moved out of the house and married. They would be sure to "swing by" and drop off the goodies the day prior so that we could celebrate on the 13th. And we continued ... but as our children came along, waking up in the dark after not having a thorough night's sleep (my daughter was only three months on her first St.Lucia), in order to celebrate breakfast in the dark, turned into ... "Let's celebrate it tonight with a dessert of Lussekatt and Bing Cherries?" And so it continued ...

Our tradition now is in the evening of December 13th, my husband and I give our children their Christmas Pajamas wrapped in white tissue paper. They quickly change into their new outfits and we celebrate Saint Lucia next to the Christmas tree, enjoying our Lussekatts, with music playing in the background, and the kids unwrapping Christmas Tree ornaments by my parents; carrying on the tradition that the ornament symbolized something personal about the child. For example, one year my son received a very cute Elf Baker when he had his weekly cooking classes with my mom, and my daughter received a Ballerina when she started dance classes.

This year, however, a slight change was made to our Saint Lucia Tradition. My children have been scheming for weeks and they decided to wake early and serve us breakfast in bed ~ the traditional Scandinavian way.

Here is the To Do List they created:

I can't believe my daughter carried this heavy tray up our staircase with out tripping or spilling (that cranberry juice would have made a mark):
I don't dare show you us in bed eating, but here are our sweet children (notice the American Girl Saint Lucia wreath upon my daughter's head):
However, we agreed that our evening tradition of eating Lussekatt by the tree will continue this evening; as we are out of butter, mom hasn't picked up the bing cherries yet, and no need to put on Christmas Pajamas at 7am to take them off an hour later, and the kids were starving for their own breakfast (which they made and came back upstairs to eat with us).

A great big kiss and hug to my kiddos; it was a nice surprise to our Saint Lucia Morning! xoxo