Story of Sant Lucia

Saint Lucia's Day

This is an important day for Christians, which has great history behind. St. Lucia is patron saint for many cities of Italy, but Syracuse takes a prominent place since Syracuse is the birth place of Sant Lucia. Even though, the history of the story runs around to AD 283, the history of the tradition runs to 1337. 13th of December is named as Saint Lucy's Day, which was the passed away date of Sant Lucy. The name call Lucia denoted the meaning of light. So, it celebrates in different countries in different ways. This day celebrate in Italy, Sweden, Croatia and Scandinavia.

The history says, that Sant Lucy supported to Christians and poor people by donating foods and her wealth during the season, which the Christianity was not permitted.She had to go with lot of obstacles while she was supporting to Christian people. Her sacrifices made her in to the title of Saint.

In Scandinavia girls wear crowns with candles and sing songs of Sant Lucia, wearing a white dress to emphasis the meaning of the day. In Italy, they celebrate this day by donating foods and gifts for poor people and children.The most important feature is preparing the plate of a food to donate to children or other people. They include different types of foods such as seeds, chocolates, fruits etc.

But in Syracuse, they organise a huge parade to display the silver stature of Sant Lucia before placing it in Basilica de Sant Lucia. Besides that, Sicilians prepare cuccìa, which is sweet desert in the form of a pudding and eat bread and pasta during this day. Exclusive of that, Italians prepare Frollini which is a kind of sweet biscuit.

Story of Sant Lucia

According to the history, Lucia was born about the year 283 in noble rich family. Her father was passed away in her young age and her mother suffered from a long-term illness, which was hard to cure in that period. So, she was praying and begging the help for her mother’s illness. One day, she had a vision of Sant Agatha and received mercy to recover her mother from the illness.

Then she tends to donate her wealth and lot more things for poor people and children. She carried foods for Christian people secretly during that period, where the Christianity was highly prohibiting. She used candle light hat and kept her hands free to carry lot more foods for Christian people at night. Due to the fact, on the Sant Lucia day, Scandinavian girls use candle light crowns to denote this event.

Later, her activities were reported to the authorities. Event though, she was to be punished by torturing, sending to brothel houses, burning, she was protected by the God by failing all these torturing activities. Then she was beheaded in AD 304. But she did a great service during her life time for poor people.

My experience,

On this day, we got together with my language class friend and made Frollini biscuits in the morning, then we prepared food plates on this day with variety of chocolate and gave them to children. While we were giving these food plates to children we offered biscuits and coffee for our friends and the children in the evening.

(I have extracted some photos from the internet)

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