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Saint Lucia Day/ December 13

December 13 is just another day to most Americans, however, in Sweden, it’s a holiday.  Saint Lucia’s Day is one of the most unique elements of the Swedish holiday season. St. Lucia’s Day, festival of lights is celebrated in Sweden, Norway, and the Swedish-speaking areas of Finland. It has long been observed by Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and Anglicans among others.  Lucia Day has made its way to the church basements and fellowship halls of Lutheran and Covenant churches all over the United States. Source

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The Lucia tradition

What does midwinter have to do with white gowns and candles? It’s Swedish Lucia!

Lesser known about Lucia celebrations

In western Sweden it was also customary that the autumn work should be finished the night before Lucia.

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  In many places in northern Sweden Lucia was according to tradition Adam’s first wife. (More often in jewish legend known as Lilith)

• Lesser known about Lucia celebrations
  In western Sweden it was also customary that the autumn work should be finished the night before Lucia.
  Lucia, December 13 Swedish Lucia, the Queen of Light coincides with many other seasonal customs and habits in Sweden of older times. Among other things one symbolically finished the threshing and then butchered the pigs. “Seven in the early morning of the day” one should also get up and get oneself a bit of food and something to drink. Not only the animals but also humankind should have a real “Lucia bite.” This could many times take extensive forms. One spoke of “Lucia drinking” for that morning one should consume a really especially large amount of liquids.

  Often it could be a question of getting up in the middle of the night and get a square meal and then tumble into bed. Then one slept a little while in order to get up peppy and happy and fill up on another breakfast. In Värmland and Dalsland that was called having a breakfast in every corner of the room – in every room in the house! It is possible that this gluttony can have its basis in the fact that during the Catholic Middle Ages the Christmas fast started after Lucia Day.

  It is interesting to note that Lucia morning seems to have been a celebration for men. In a diary from the 1790’s it was recounted that the men in the house “were up and celebrated Lucia in the usual manner, but Eva and I lay in bed until 8 o’clock”. It also said that they “ate the fat and drank the sweetness the whole day”.
  Enjoy some of our recent films from Lucia celebrations in Swedish America: http://www.youtube.com/nordstjernan or at www.vimeo.com/nordstjernan and Swedish Christmas – the Season of Light

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  Modern day “lussegubbar” at a church celebration in Sweden.

• “Lussegubbar” – Lucia Guys
  There were also men who made themselves look frightening in costumes, blackened their faces and went out as “Lucia guys” to amuse themselves and also or perhaps just take the opportunity to make a little mischief.
  This is a custom that has entirely disappeared today but which remains in men’s memory and occurred a couple of generations ago.
  Even if there is no connection, it can be of interest to know that in several places, among others in the German and Austrian alpine regions it happened that young people on Lucia morning dressed up in fright costumes and masks and went from house to house.
  The concept of Lucia combined with fright and evil is not entirely strange for us Swedes either. First there are the corruptions of the name of the day’s saint, which has led to that. It has been connected to the evil Lucifer and to lice and other vermin.
  “The day before Lucia it was best to be nice, for on Lucia eve the Lucia witch could come. She was both wicked and dangerous. She could take the children away with her”. Thus it was told in Värmlandsnäs as late as in the 1950’s.

• A man’s celebration
  It is primarily in the western part of Sweden that the celebration of Lucia morning has its strongest roots. There it has always been a man’s celebration. It was also the western Swedish students (male also naturally at that time), which in the beginning of the 1800’s took with them the traditions and established them in Uppsala, Stockholm and Lund. Primarily Värmlanders and Dalslanders but also those from Västergötland and Gothenburg saw to it that students up to our present day in ritual form observed Lucia breakfast in their “nations” just as the venerable Wermländska Sällskapet (Värmland Society) in Stockholm has held its major celebration on Lucia Day since 1816.
  In many places in northern Sweden Lucia was according to tradition Adam’s first wife. She was of underground origin and someone to watch out for. If the children were not kept inside during the evenings before Christmas, they could risk being kidnapped by Lucia.

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Lucia celebrations – a unique tradition with ancient roots

One of the most exotic Swedish traditions is Lucia, celebrated on 13 December. Lucia arrives in the morning, with her handmaidens and star boys; in white robes, carry candles and sing Lucia songs. The tradition has its roots far back in history.

Most people in Sweden have probably experienced a Lucia procession, which is always held on 13 December. Lucia arrives with a crown of candles, accompanied by handmaidens carrying candles and “star boys” with cone-shaped hats, all dressed in long white robes. A Lucia procession sometimes includes children dressed as gingerbread biscuits and elves. Everyone sings traditional Lucia songs that most Swedes know (more or less) by heart.
Burning candles are nowadays sometimes replaced by battery-powered ones. Even so, a special atmosphere is created when the well-known songs are heard in the distance and the Lucia procession enters a room in darkness.
Coffee and saffron buns (“lussekatter”) are often served after the procession. The buns are baked from wheat and the saffron in them gives a special yellow colour. The most common shape for a bun is “S”, with the ends rolled into a spiral and decorated with raisins. Lucia is celebrated at Linköping University in several ways. It differs from year to year, and it’s not unknown for departments and divisions to arrange their own, smaller Lucia processions, or invite schoolchildren in to hold a procession for them. The many choirs at the university hold concerts, performing the traditional Lucia songs. In recent years, modern variants have been seen, with robots holding their own Lucia procession.

So how old is this tradition, and where does it come from?

Lucia has its roots both in Swedish prehistorical and medieval history and in what is now Italy during the Roman empire.
In prehistoric Sweden, the cycle through the year was marked. At the darkest time of the year, before the winter solstice, folk believed that evil powers such as demons and trolls were rife, causing trouble. On this night, a being known as “Lussi” or “Lussegubben” was around. He was also known as “Lusse-Per” or “Lucifer”, and was identified as the Devil himself. To prevent bad things happening to the farm or its animals, people held watch through the night.

Each day in the calendar was given a saint

When Christianity took over Sweden and introduced the Julian calendar, the longest night of the year was the one between 12 and 13 December. This was the case until 1753, when the Gregorian calendar that we use today was introduced. On this calendar, the winter solstice occurs on 22 December.

When Christianity took over Sweden, each day in the calendar was given a saint. The one for 13 December was Saint Lucia. She gets her name from the Latin “lux”, which means “light”.
Saint Lucia was born around 280 AD in Syracuse on Sicily and was chosen as a Christian martyr and saint after her death. In Christian art, she is depicted with a sword or dagger and a wounded neck. Sometimes, she carries two eyes on a plate, and this refers to the legend that before her death she gouged out her eyes and sent them to her true love. However, God gave her new and even more beautiful eyes.

The celebration of Lucia continued in Sweden as it had been for centuries, right up until the 18th century, and food and alcohol were often involved. Young people travelled from farm to farm, hammered on the door, sang a brief ditty, and were given liquor and food as thanks.
However, this old heathen tradition with its drinking was not popular among the priests. Rather than forbidding the custom, they gave Saint Lucia a more important role in the celebrations. This technique, of absorbing heathen local traditions into religion, became a compromise, and was used for other things than just the Lucia celebrations.

Modern Lucia celebrations

The foundation of modern Lucia celebrations was set in western Sweden among the higher layers of society. Towards the end of the 19th century, the Skansen open-air museum in Stockholm established Lucia celebrations, but it wasn’t until 1927 that the tradition became popular among the broader public. This was when the Lucia competition was held, with several candidates competing to be crowned Lucia. Most Swedish towns were quick to copy the idea. Schools and workplaces also took up the custom, and Lucia, who initially had been rather lonely, acquired a following of handmaidens, star boys, the three wise men, gingerbread biscuits and elves.
Lucia today is an important tradition for many people. For those with small children, celebrations start early at home, continue at preschools and schools, and may also be held at the workplace.  (And as we have seen, Lucia Celebrations are very big on University and College campuses.)

Lucia has become something of a symbol for Sweden. Only the Nordic countries have a tradition of Lucia celebrations centred around light, two weeks before Christmas. Lucia is an important tie to their home country for Swedish people throughout the world, who have taken the concept with them as an export product.

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Lucia and Lilith, representations of evil and good femininity
Katarina Ek-Nilsson

The present work is based on the folk memory records found in the Nordic Museum’s archives about the figure of Lucia, and on the older stories that exist about the female figure Lilith. Taken together, these narrative traditions are expressions of conceptions of femininity—evil and good.

I will distinguish four different bases of the Norse conceptions of Lucia and traditions surrounding that figure, and then make a transition to Sumerian and Jewish stories about Lilith, which are consistent with some stories about Lucia, and I will finally discuss Lilith’s role as representative for a form of femininity in Jewish tradition.

LUCIA IN FOUR VERSIONS

The Lucia most people first associate with is the celebration of Lucia that developed during the 19th and 20th centuries and which is well described in ethnological and cultural history literature from above all Sweden and Finland (Bringéus 1976, Lönnqvist 2005 and others).

The friendly, preferably blonde Lucia who serves coffee with her bridesmaids in the morning, at home or in public. Lucia is considered here as a symbol of light, a harbinger of Christmas, a gentle and serving female figure. The tradition in its present form arose in a manor
environment in the early 1800s and spread, in Sweden above all in the Vännerskap. the perception of what the tradition should look like has been created, among other things, by the mass media, for example through the Lucia competitions that have been organized by newspapers since the 1920s. The tradition is well represented in the archive material and then often linked to schools – agricultural schools, home economics schools, folk high schools and associations, not infrequently temperance associations. Regarding this, today’s most famous Lucia representation, there are models in German tradition, the so-called
Christkindlein tradition, where a girl with candles in her hair represents Jesus. The light symbolizes the halo of Jesus. The Christian Lucian, Sancta Lucia, has its origin in a Catholic saint’s story about the young beautiful Sicilian woman who in the 2nd century became a martyr for the sake of her Christian faith. This Lucia received her saint’s day on December 13. There is not much about Sancta Lucia in the archive material that reproduces older Swedish folk tradition. The Lucia tradition is also a lusse tradition that is tied to the night before Lucia Day. This night, according to the folk memory material, was a dangerous night when evil forces and evil creatures were out and playing their pranks on those who ventured out. some sages announce that they never celebrated Lucia because they don’t want to celebrate “the evil one”. during the lussen night, there were “dangers in the air” including the so-called “lussifarden”, consisting of the deceased, who traveled through the air.  Strange things could happen. The animals talked to each other, the cows celebrated weddings in the barn. You weren’t allowed to grind, bake, brew or carry out other sensitive tasks – then things could go wrong.  Ill-tempered creatures were out, and they had different names, such as “Lussegubben”, “lusse”, “lusserring”, or simply “mean sissies”. Dangerous lunatic figures could thus have both male and female gender. There are many stories about what can happen during this night: mill wheels breaking and the like. It was also Odin who was out riding at night, so it might be wise to add hay to Odin’s horse outside the barn.

This “dark” part of the Lucia celebration also includes the records in the Nordic Museum’s archives from Bohuslän, Småland, Västergötland and Dalarna, which deal with circumambulation
according to the pattern that is also linked to other times of the year in Nordic folk tradition – Knutsday, Fettisdagen or Walpurgis fair evening. young people dress up, turn their clothes inside out, paint their faces black, women dress as men and men as women – in other words, you behave against the otherwise prevailing norms. Goat skins, tails, horns, cock skulls and straw bales were part of the props at these pranks, and people sang more or less piquant songs, drank and begged for food and drink.

A frequent motif in the records of Lucian traditions is, as noted above, the evil woman. She is called a mean woman, a lousy woman, a whore or the like and was “not a nice person”, says a sage. She could take the courage from the horses and also take the children with her.  An interesting variation is when this evil female being appears in the form of a bird of prey that wanted to eat the children.  We meet here in the records an evil female being who directed her evil against the children above all.  It is this fourth understanding of the feminine symbol known as Lucia that I intend to develop.

ADAM’S FIRST WIFE

Lucia “Adam had a wife before Eve, whose name was Lucia. (Not true.  This was a story created by Kabbalists and pagans.)  She had many children. Now when the Lord came to her once, she hid them away. Then the Lord made it so that these became invisible for all time. It was the punishment for Lucia being ashamed of them. But this is not mentioned in the Bible, but maybe it was there before, because there are two books missing that used to be found, the 6th and 7th books of Moses”. So reads one of many examples in our folk memory archive that deals with Adam’s first wife.
Common to these stories about Lucia as Adam’s first wife is that she denies her children. She hides them in the oven, she says they don’t exist, or she says they’re invisible. The consequence is, the records agree, that Lucia thus gives rise to the race of the invisible, the subterranean, the weathered. There is also a connection to Lucifer. Lucia is sometimes stated to be Lucifer’s wife – she became in league with him after she left Adam.
It could also be a woman named Lucifer. This Lucia was impious and evil, frivolous and had illegitimate children. She also gave birth to many children, like animals, some records say, and she had mating season just like animals. Because of her impiety, and because she tricked Adam into eating from the famous apple, she was banished and condemned to dwell in mountain crevices and balls of earth until Judgment Day.
However, we humans are descendants of Eve, says one record confidently. Thus, the stories of Lucia are closely associated with children, childbearing, with lies and
shame and with the damned, the underground or invisible. She breaks with the strong female norm of protecting children by denying her own children, by inordinate sexual urges that resemble those of animals more than humans, and by trying, in the guise of a bird of prey, to snatch away other children. The notion of this Lucia creates fear, condemnation and contempt.

LiLiTH

“I have to write a few lines in a hurry. The thing is, I recently went to
Stugun, a neighboring parish. There I became acquainted with a farmer called Hornej who was from a suburb, Fisksjölandet. we got in touch about some things in the area of ​​folk beliefs.
I happened to mention Lucia. He, too, had heard of Adam’s first wife, but he had heard that her name was Lillit, red-haired and deplorably mean, and brown-eyed. Everyone who is red-haired and brown-eyed descends from her, and these generally have the characteristics of the progenitor. He had heard this in his childhood from an old woman who walked around the parish carding wool. She would have been born in the 1780s and her name was Kerstin Moberg.
The old man made a very credible impression on me and was vilified by everyone as trustworthy.” So writes recorder Levi Johansson to the Nordic Museum in 1908.

LILITH IN SUMERIAN AND JEWISH TRADITION

We now leave Jämtland and follow Lilith, the incarnation of evil femininity, to another part of the world and another era. in the Epic of Gilgamesh, written in Sumerian in cuneiform but based on older oral sources, from around 2400 BC, there is the story of the huppulu tree, planted by the goddess Inanna and inhabited
by Lilit and the bird Zu. a snake guards the tree.
The hero king Gilgamesh defeats the snake and cuts down the tree, whereupon Lilith is allowed to go to desolate places far from human habitation. She will become the goddess of desolation and inaccessibility and a demon of the night.  In future stories she is often associated with birds of prey and with snakes. She becomes the witch who steals children and seduces men in their sleep, and she can also steal men’s sperm.

Here we can compare with the Nordic mara, which behaves in a similar way, and
which is also associated with birds. One can protect oneself against marana by nailing up a
dead owl, for example (raudvere 1993).
Lilit or, as she is sometimes called, Lilu, can also be found in other old records, for example in a Babylonian terracotta relief from the 2nd century BC.There she is portrayed as slender and beautiful, with wings and owl’s feet.
From the eighth century there is a depiction of Lilit where she is depicted as a winged
sphinx equipped with incantation texts, the function of which is to help women in childbirth.
Spell texts mentioning Lilith are also found on several pots. She was probably perceived as a kind of winged night demon who resided in distant regions, and who had to do with childbirth. She could be behind infant deaths, by strangling the children, and she gave men troubled sexual dreams (Dame & Rivlin & Wenkart 1998).
Lilith is thus in old myths a very central figure in the sphere that has to do with sexuality and gender. From this early era there is no record of Lilith being Adam’s first wife.

BEN SIRA’S ALPHABET

Ben Sira’s alphabet is a collection of writings that are based on and interpret the Jewish (Kabbalist) tradition about creation, among other things. in that collection of writings is the story of Adam’s first wife Lilith.
BenSira’s alphabet was written sometime between the 6th and 10th centuries, perhaps by multiple authors and possibly as a parody of the creation
story (Dame & rivlin & Wenkart 1998, Grobgeld 1997).

Here we meet Adam’s first wife, she who
was mostly called Lucia in the Swedish stories, and who was created at the same time as Adam, out of the earth. Adam and Lilith/Lucia were created together as equals. Lilith refused to submit to the man, Adam. Among other things, there is the opinion that she does not wanted to be under Adam during intercourse. She set herself up not only against Adam but also against God by mentioning his name – a strong taboo in (Kabbalist) Judaism (Begg 1985 et al.).

She had to choose between leaving Adam and paradise, and to start obeying him, and chose to fly away. Adam complained to God, who sent three angels to fetch the bouncer home by the red sea, but she refused to go back with them, declaring that the babies belonged to her – boys for eight days, girls for 22 days, but that she would spare them if they wore amulets with the names of the angels.
Now Adam was alone in paradise and God solved it by creating Eve, who became more submissive. After all, she is also created from a part of Adam, and is thus in some sense not a being of her own. Perhaps Ben Sira combined two or perhaps oral traditions, that of the demon of night, desolation and winds harming children
and that of Adam’s first woman.
It seems that these stories are not connected from the beginning (Dame & rivlin & Wenkart 1998, www.geocities.com 20090813) Lilith in Ben Sira’s alphabet has three roles: as incarnation of lust, which leads men to sin, as infanticide and as Adam’s first wife.

LILITH IN THE MEDIEVAL JEWISH TRADITION

During the Middle Ages, especially in the Kabbalah, which emphasizes the mysticism of the ancient religious stories, under the influence of ideas in Islam, and which claims to have a mystical understanding of the divine order, the concept of Lilith developed into the evil, dark, underground (www.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Kabbala
20090817, Dame & rivlin & Wenkart 1998).

She became the partner of Samael, i.e. the devil. When Lilith came to be perceived as the devil’s partner, the notion of her evil grew. Now the stories develop about how she steals sperm and thus weakens manhood and she kills babies if you fail to protect them. Lilith is the Jewish woman who has violated the female norm in Jewish society, partly by not submitting to the man, partly by being dangerous towards children. Therefore, she must be considered a demon. She personifies the dark side of woman’s
creative and sexual powers. Not spouse but seductress, not faithful but promiscuous. Although she is associated with reproduction, she is a child and woman killer, in the medieval stories she is often a double nature and can also be perceived as Eve’s twin. Lilith came to play a special role in Jewish history and tradition, from the Middle Ages onwards. It can be argued that the portrayal of Lilith is closely related to the position of the Jews in medieval Europe.  The Jewish group is constantly threatened, not least by the Inquisition. The Jewish man became increasingly unsure of his role during the pogroms that occurred, with elements of rape and infanticide, perhaps above all in Spain, when he was unable to protect his women and children. Infant death and cot death threatened and then Lilith’s crimes against the children and her negative influence on births are emphasized. Lilith represents the evil forces, from which the man cannot protect his family.
Paradoxically, the role of women in the Jewish community is strengthened during the Inquisition so that the group’s existence will become dependent on the woman’s behavior. Lilith will then represent the strength of femininity as well as the danger and evil. “Nothing less than Jewish survival hinges on the woman’s behavior” (Dame & Rivlin & Wenkart 1998 p. 20).
One can even see in the story of Lilith a metaphor for the story of the fate of the Jews. By having fled to desolate regions she represents the exile of her people, and by being condemned she represents the pariah status of the Jews. She is pushed away when she wants to assert her self-determination and does not want to be forced into submission. The story of Lilith as deviating from the norm in which the patriarchy wants to place her is the story of the position of the Jews vis-à-vis the majority society, whether in Babylonia, Egypt or medieval or modern Europe
(Dame & Rivlin & Wenkart 1998).

TODAY’S REPRESENTATIONS OF LILITH

Jewish women today often have fragmentary images of a Lilith. She is, as a Jewish feminist puts it, a “shadowy presence in our culture”. in current Jewish feminism, and also other feminisms, her violation of norms, which in older tradition led to her being perceived as evil, has formed the starting point for another understanding, that of freedom, power, independence and indomitability. The kaleidoscope has been twisted in the interpretation of Lilith (Dame & rivlin & Wenkart 1998, Lilith
magazine, http://hem.bredband.net/lilithfanzine/ lilithvem.html etc.).
Today there are newly written operas about the strong woman Lilith, there are conversation groups among Jewish women who gather in Lilith’s name, there is a Jewish feminist magazine that has been published in New York since 1977 under the name Lilith, there are girl rock bands that are connected to Lilith, and a a lot of fiction that tells about the woman Lilith who had to leave Adam, go into the desert, become Samael’s wife and give birth to his many children
(Gustavsson et al.).

The male gaze on Lilith showed her as an enemy, a threat to the male order but also to survival. in Jewish circles she can be said to represent “the fear that resides in all of us” (Dame&rivlin&Wenkart 1998 p. 57), while at the same time she stands for female strength, power and independence. in a new Jewish feminist interpretation, she
thus personifies

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RISE OF FEMINISM