Minnesota Now and Then: Santa Lucia

NINA MOINI: In the old Swedish calendar, December 13 was the shortest day of the year. And this weekend there will be a celebration on that day to honor Saint Lucia, the lady of the light. It's been going on for 400 years in Sweden. For our Minnesota Now and Then, where we take you to Bemidji, people have been gathering for Santa Lucia Festival for not quite as long. Former MPR reporter Tom Robertson brings us this story from 1998.

TOM ROBERTSON: It's 5:30 AM. About 400 people mill about outside a banquet Hall in Bemidji, sipping hot apple cider and traditional Swedish glogg, a mulled wine mixed with almonds and raisins.

SUBJECT 1: It's supposed to be 20 below, though, isn't it, when we drink this?

SUBJECT 2: Well, I don't know. It's pretty pleasant, just like it is.

SUBJECT 1: Oh it is. [LAUGHS]

TOM ROBERTSON: Members of the Bemidji affiliate of the American Swedish Institute have already been awake for several hours now, preparing for the festivities. For 23 years, Swedes in Bemidji have joined in the Santa Lucia celebration, diligently preserving it as it was and is celebrated in their ancestral homeland.

MONICA O'BOYLE: I don't know, maybe we're more traditional than in Sweden. But this is how it's been done for several centuries.

TOM ROBERTSON: Monica O'Boyle is a native of Stockholm, and helped organize Bemidji's first Santa Lucia Festival in 1976. O'Boyle says Lucia was Italian, and no one is really sure how her legend came to be celebrated so enthusiastically in Sweden.

MONICA O'BOYLE: Well, Lucia, she lived in the year around 300, and she was a Sicilian girl, and she was betrothed to a Roman soldier. But she was Christian, and he would have none of that, and she would not renounce her Christianity. So as a punishment, they poked her eyes out. She was blind.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

TOM ROBERTSON: A rather gory tale. But by the 17th Century, the legend filtered North, losing its element of tragedy and instead turning into a Swedish yuletide celebration of hope, of the beginning of the end of long, cold winter days. Bonnie Lonsdorf, whose daughter, Lindsey Schmit, was selected as this year's Santa Lucia, says Lucia has been a holiday tradition in her family for years.

BONNIE LONSDORF: Well, for a lot of people, it's the way to start the Christmas season, and that's the way I looked at it when I first started coming to the festival about 18 years ago. And it's just a good way to start the season. You leave here that morning and you feel warm, you feel rich in tradition, and it's a good, warm feeling.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

TOM ROBERTSON: By about 10 minutes to 6:00, the crowd is allowed to file into the banquet Hall, where after entertainment from a children's top day choir, the lights are extinguished. The crowd waits silently for Santa Lucia and her entourage, Monica O'Boyle.

MONICA O'BOYLE: When everybody is seated, the lights go out all over, and in comes Lucia. And she's dressed in a white dress, with a red sash, and a crown of live candles in her hair.

SUBJECT 3: (SINGING) [INAUDIBLE]

MONICA O'BOYLE: And she's followed by attendants, also in white, but they have tinsel crowns, and tinsel around their waists, and they all carry a candle. And it's pitch dark there. It's very beautiful.

SUBJECT 3: (SINGING) Be glad that you see old Santa Lucia,

Santa Lucia.

NINA MOINI: That was former MPR News reporter Tom Robertson with a story about Santa Lucia Festival, which is held every year on December 13 in Sweden, Bemidji, and beyond. You can find a longer version of his story in our archives at mprnews.org.