What is Sankta Lucia?

Lucia - one of the greatest traditions of Sweden. What is it? Well, let me explain. This is a major event celebrating the Saint named Lucia from Italy. She was a lovely lady who unfortunately suffered a cruel death where she was burned alive. In memory of her, the Swedes have a major church service dedicated to her every year, and even if church isn't usually your thing, I wouldn't miss this for the world!

Dressed in white, a slow flow of people walk through the aisle, candles in hand and glitter through hair. The sound of music crescendos as the choir enters the building and makes their way to the front, with 'Lucia' leading the choir. The chosen girl to act as Lucia wears a red sash and a crown of candles on her head - yes, they are real - and stands in the front centre throughout the performance. The choir sings throughout the whole performance with candles lighting up their faces. There is something quite beautiful about this simple light as it burns. Then, once all the music has been performed, the choir returns to the first piece they sang and begin to wander back through the aisle, leaving the building with merely an echo of the last few voices. So, that is a bit about Lucia. Now let me tell you what it is like to be part of the performance!

I was lucky enough to be Lucia during my exchange in Sweden, and it was definitely a fun experience! Lucia stands out from the rest of the choir as she leads them when entering and leaving the building and also remains  about 1 metre in front of the choir throughout the performance. If this wasn't enough to help someone figure out who Lucia was, she is then dressed in a red sash and a crown of 5 candles. This is a lot heavier than you would think. Being Lucia, it is very important to stand straight so the candles stay in place. However, this will not prevent the wax from dripping down into your hair, and if you are unlucky, onto your face. I had a little fall down onto my forehead and was quick to brush it away! Overall, it wasn't that painful and didn't leave any marks. The worst part was trying to remove all the wax that had glued itself to my hair!!

The performance which I took part in had 9 songs in total. There was a mix of traditional Swedish music and popular Christmas hits. It was a whole lot of fun to learn the Swedish music, and then singalong to some of everyone's favourite Christmas songs. We had a full band performing with us and several soloists. On top of this we had some professional lights to jazz it up a little bit more on some of the more fun pieces. Overall, I think it worked out really well! We did a total of 6 performances in the course of 2 days. Busy!

I found this event a whole lot of fun and quite different from usual. While the whole candle idea does seem a bit dangerous, it sure is pretty! If anyone is interested in taking a look at the performance, here is a link to a video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hffN1YH9_Ak . Unfortunately the darker atmosphere does make it a little harder to see everything clearly in the video, but it looks great in real life!