**All about the light**

             And then the 13th of December… Saint Lucia Day. One of my favourites in December celebrated in Scandinavia, Hungary, Italy, but mostly in Sweden.

             It involved the oldest daughter to wake up early in the morning wearing white dress with red belt and some candles on her head waking her family, singing at the same time a song entitled Sankta Lucia and serve them breakfast and coffee. This tradition is attached to the day that people used to believe it was the darkest day of the year. As we all know, Nordic countries have little sunlight during the whole year, especially in the winter time, so they gave this day to St Lucia protection to have from this day on more light. Moreover, darkness was connected with bad spirits, demons and ghost that in this special time were able to make people some pranks or bad things by the possibility of their outside activity.

              Nowadays, this very special holiday is celebrated as a Lucia procession in which one girl- “Lucia”- is leading boys, called “star boys” and girls, all wearing white robes with red belts carrying the candles and singing St Lucia’s songs and others referring to December and, getting closer, Christmas time. To me this holiday is really beautiful and worth seeing, especially in Sweden during this long, dark and cold night when the candle light, songs and gathering make this moments so warm and beautiful.

Sankta Lucia's song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bz9frZQHuyg