When I grew up, this was the structure of a proper Lucia procession.
First: Lucia. A (traditionally blond girl) person dressed in a crown with candles (traditionally live, safer and more modern: electric), a white dress and a red sash.
Then: Some number of Tärnor, traditionally all girls, dressed in white dresses with tinsel sashes, and carrying one candle each.
After these: Some number of Stjärngossar, traditionally all boys, dressed in white dresses with white, tall, conical hats adorned with golden stars. Optionally with golden stars on the tops of little wands.
Subsequently: Some number of gingerbread men: brown clothes with adornments in the shape of frosting.
Finally: Some number of Tomtar (gnomes?) in all red, with white trims, a floppy hat with white trim and bobble, and carrying lanterns.

These bring the traditional Lucia breakfast: mulled wine, gingerbread cookies and sweet saffron wheat bread with raisins.

And that's how I remember St. Lucy's. (I could go on and on and on about the correct and les than correct songs to include too… But let's let this be enough for now.)

Well, the legend says that she was blinded, and she is often pictured holding a dish with her eyeballs in it. Dec. 13 was the shortest day of the year, under the old calendar, which probably explains why it was given to her.

I'll be eating bullar tomorrow at dawn, and lighting candles, as I always do on Dec. 13th.

signed,
Lucy

Humon's Scandinavia and the World takes a look at Nordic christmas celebrations.

Elvis Presley sings the “original” sicilian melody.

Really.

I think part of the light connection is that on the old calendar December 13 was the shortest day of the year, as in John Donne's "A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy's Day Being the Shortest Day":

'TIS the year's midnight, and it is the day's,
Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks ;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays ;
The world's whole sap is sunk ;
The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed's-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr'd ; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who am their epitaph.

Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next spring ;
For I am every dead thing,
In whom Love wrought new alchemy.
For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness ;
He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death—things which are not.

All others, from all things, draw all that's good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have ;
I, by Love's limbec, am the grave
Of all, that's nothing. Oft a flood
Have we two wept, and so
Drown'd the whole world, us two ; oft did we grow,
To be two chaoses, when we did show
Care to aught else ; and often absences
Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

While not as famous as any number of other poems by Donne, to me, this one epitomizes Donne.

With gingerbread for breakfast, at work.

In Croatia, it's traditional to plant some wheat grains in a small pot on St. Lucy's. On Christmas day, you then judge how good the year is going to be by the state of the wheat. And, of course, local florists now sell already-grown wheat in pots for those who forgot or simply didn't have much luck with their own.

What? No Staffan? Butbutbut... Who will be singing the male first soprano if there is no Staffan?

Of course, the exact composition of the Lucia parade does differ from locality to locality and back when I was of an age to be roped into appearing (rather than, as it were, choosing if I do or not), it might've been an interesting mix of "from everywhere".

And now I shall go make coffee, because it's the real St. Lucy's Day and we have coffee bread to enjoy.

Thank you. That explains the little bears on the Christmas cards I bought at Ikea a few years ago.

I coveted that crown of candles like you wouldn't believe. When the kid was of the age for American Girl dolls, we went with Kirsten, mostly because the kid was blond, but we also made sure to buy the St. Lucia outfit.

The closest I've ever come to the crown of candles was when I played Luthien in a masquerade entry, and I had perhaps a dozen battery-operated LED blinky stars in my hair (and light of stars was in her hair/and on her raiment glimmering). I loved it.

e.g. This painting by Domenico Beccafumi. St. Lucy must be the final image in the descrition of a vandalised church near the end of Saramago's Blindness.

I did have glögg and saffron bullar and gingerbread snaps for breakfast this morning, but I didn't go see my Alma Mater's choir do their traditional procession.

Lumna cormóres nar
peler ar mardor,
or ambar alanar
caitar i mordor,
íre mir lóna már
ninquitar lícumar:
Ela i calmacolinde,
Lícumafinde!

Found at Aardvarchaeology

Thank you for the link, and the recommendation of the 2006 entry in particular. Powerful and worth reading.

That poem had me thinking for years that St. Lucy's day must be either the 22nd or 23rd. (The 'eleven days' never occurred to me).

abi@27: Seconded. Thank you Jo (and Mris, if you happen to be lurking.)

The Swedish custom with the candles makes me think that St. Lucy ought really to be the patron saint of fire prevention officers. On the principle of lucus a non lucendo, naturally.

Or Domenico Veneziano's St. Lucy Altarpiece, where Lucy is on the right, eyeballs on a tray.

(From 'The Cultivation of Christmas Trees.)

I have never seen the carol before. I know the Neapolitan folk song, which is not about the actual saint at all, but, apparently, about a place of that name on the Bay of Naples.

Regarding the date: I don't think it can have been chosen for St Lucy because it was the shortest day, since the feast will have been established before the calendar got so out of step. It just has to be seen as a lucky coincidence.

Without knowing it's true for St. Lucia specifically, a lot of the various celebrations shifted around a bit, and were normalized to the current calendar later. It's possible that St. Lucia's day was celebrated on the shortest day of the year, and later standardized to the 13th.

Especially if she's really an adopted goddess.

And the drink served in Lake Wobegone on St. Lucia mornings is the coffee tradition, rather than the glogg..

Woman takes shameful advantage of cat's attraction to bathroom heater, and squirts druga down her gullet and into her ears, then sprays the prescribed soothing spray onto area where skin allergy has manifested. Cat, while attempting to depart with prejudice, heard to exclaim "No. I get out of here, me. I follow you, Vorga. I find you, Vorga. I pay you back, me. I rot you. I kill you, Vorga. I kill you filthy,"

I have no idea where she came up with that, as I don't think there's any Bester in the house.

I have no idea where the pastor who told me that got it from, just throwing it out there.

I guess it's possible that the Scandinavian ceremony is a co-optation of a pagan tradition, given how late paganism continued there; but the feast itself goes back a lot further than that. 'Lucia' is a perfectly real Roman name; the way the significance of her name and the date of her feast fit together may just be a happy coincidence.

The thing is, most of the Christian seasonal rituals, and a fair proportion of their saints, are known to be adopted from pagan rituals and myths respectively. (One thing the evangelicals are plain right about!) So when I see a girl or young woman called "Lucia", bearing a crown of light through a midwinter ritual, that fits smoothly into well-known patterns.