Throughout Scandinavia, a highlight of the season is December 13th, the feast day of Santa Lucia. She was a fourth-century Sicilian woman who (according to the lore) wore a head wreath adorned with candles to light the way as she helped persecuted Christians hiding in tunnels. The Scandinavian version of the legend is that a young woman born of rich and noble parents — dressed in a white gown with a red sash and wearing a crown of lingonberry twigs and blazing candles — traveled from one farm to

Buried deep in the darkness of winter all around the globe, there are rituals, festivals, and holy days designed to shine a light of hope and promise as we wait for spring. Christians pegged the birthday of Jesus in the dead of winter, on a day already honoring the pagan god Saturn…on the winter solstice. And throughout time, in that season of the longest night of the year, people have turned to God (or the gods) for the promise of new life. In a joyous respite from the mid-winter blahs, they th