Lucia Dagen

Tomorrow the Church celebrates the memorial of St. Lucy (or Lucia), virgin and martyr.

This year I bought my own copy of a childhood favorite Christmas craft book, Christmas Magic, The Art of making Decorations and Ornaments by Margaret Perry, copyright 1964. My sisters and I would pore over these pages and try to do as many projects with the materials we had at hand. The book is out-of-print, but very inexpensive copies can be found easily. Although secular in nature, there are so many great ideas.

As I revisited this book, I remembered how much I enjoyed the image of her Lucia doll and her description:

Lucia Dagen, or Lucia's Day, is celebrated in Scandinavia on the thirteenth of December to welcome in the Christmas season--the season of light.

Lucia (pronounced Loo-see-a) is the Queen of Light.. She dresses in a long white robe and wears a crown of lighted candles on her head, as she walks from room to room at dawn, carrying a tray of coffee and rolls to all the members of the family.

Traditionally, Lucia's crown contained real candles, but today the candles are electrified--like little flashlights.

many of the offices of Scandinavia today the custom is followed. Sometime during the day, on the thirteenth of December, Lucia comes with lighted crown and a tray of rolls and coffee.

Here we havea 12-inch doll to celebrate Lucia Dagen. Her robe is made of white silk, and her corwn holds seven 3 1/2 inch candles. It is made on an embroidery hoop 4 inches in diameter--which just fits her head. The candles, evenly spaced, are attached with masking tape. Princess pine is wound around the hoop and held in place with very fine wire.

We rarely light her candles--unless we are watching carefully--but she stands in the hall to greet our guests as a symbol of the season of light.

As a young girl, I never thought I could recreate this idea, so I didn't even try. But this year I realized I didn't really have an image of Santa Lucia, Queen of Light, and this chapter came to mind. I have a box of old dolls and one I could use to create a Lucia Doll of my own.

I wish I could say it was a success story, but it's not. It's another "not quite there"crafting attempt, but I thought I would share anyway. I loosely followed Mrs. Perry's instructions, but used what I had on hand. My doll was named "Freckles", with white blond hair. I first cut out a white gown for her to wear. But I had sewing machine troubles and never could get a single stitch done. So Freckles has to wear pink, and it's not even her original dress.

I didn't have an embroidery hoop, but I did find some of those plastic child-sized cups from restaurants fit quite nicely, so I cut the rim off (punctured a hole in the middle of the cup to keep the rim intact) and colored it with permanent marker. From there I used some faux lingonberry branches, green florist wire and white Chanakah candles (I bought on sale this summer since they were such a nice size) to attach the greenery and candles to make the crown.

My mistakes: I didn't attach the candles first and only used 6 candles. I used green chenille stems to cover up the wire I used to hold the candles, so don't look too closely.

I think she does look cute, and pretty convincing in a quick glance sort of way as a Santa Lucia. Now that I've made one, I'm ready to recreate and work through some of my mistakes.

Tomorrow we celebrate my son's first birthday, so the recreation will have to take place later. I'm also going to try my hand at the Santa Lucia dolls from Posie Gets Cozy. I just received my supplies from Casey's Wood and can't wait to start!

Be sure to visit the previous links on St. Lucia in "O Night Divine":

• St. Lucia of Syracuse
• Happy Feast of St. Lucy
• Getting Ready included a link to the wonderful article on St. Lucia in Simple Gifts Magazine by Nissa Gadbois.

Some further inspiration:

• Catholic Cuisine
• Catholic Culture
• Look at these delightful St. Lucia Cupcakes!
• Nordic Museum has some instructions for star boy wands and lucia crowns

St. Lucy, virgin and martyr, pray for us!

Written by Jennifer Gregory Miller

Comments

[Mary M.]

She did turn out really cute. It's so neat that you have that old book you remember from your childhood - there is something magical about those memeories and recreating them.

[Jordans Sneakers]

Through the earth, and that is love is the treasure!