How many Italian-American people can say that they did not grow up with their grandmothers cooking on Sunday with Mario Lanza singing Santa Lucia in the background? Very few, I am sure. I grew up with the notion that Santa Lucia was an old Italian folk song.
Who was Santa Lucia? She was Saint Lucy (283–304), also known as Saint Lucia, who was a wealthy young Christian martyr, venerated as a saint. This Italian saint has been "adopted" by the Swedish and other Scandinavian people.
Her origins, however, are actually not Scandinavian, but instead, Sicilian. According to the Sicilian legend, Lucia's mother (who was wealthy) had been cured of an illness by the sepulcher of Saint Agatha in Catania. Lucia persuaded her mother to show her gratitude by distributing her wealth to the poor. By candelight, the mother and daughter went about the city distributing wealth to the sick.
In art, she is often seen with eyes on an offering plate. Legend has it that her fiancé denounced her as a Christian to the governor of Syracuse, Sicily. The guards were unable to move or burn her, so they took out her eyes with a fork. In another version, her fiancé so admired her eyes that she tore them out, handed them to him and said “Now let me live to God.”
No one is exactly sure how this legend made it’s way to Scandinavia, but it was said that Santa Lucia had appeared during a famine in Sweden in the middle ages, carrying food to the farmers across a lake.
St. Lucia's Day is now celebrated in Sweden by a girl putting on a white dress with a red sash around her waist and a crown of candles on her head. (Electric candles are used in modern times for safety) This crown is made of lingonberry branches as they are evergreen and celebrate new life in winter. A national Lucia is also chosen and Lucias also visit hospitals and the elderly, singing songs about St Lucia and handing out Pepparkakor (ginger snap biscuits).
Sul mare luccia l'astro d'argento,
Placida è l'onda, prospero è il vento
Venite all'agile barchetta mia...
Santa Lucia! Santa Lucia!
Con questo zeffiro, così soave
Oh! Com'è bello star su la nave!
Su passaggieri, venite via!
Santa Lucia! Santa Lucia!
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