Sankta Lucia

Every year about this time we hear a sermon in church that faults us for focusing on the wrong things at the holidays--all the parties and shopping and presents rather than the birth of Christ. We are reminded to remember the real reason for celebrating Christmas. While the commercialization of Christmas is undeniable, I find the message rather unhelpful. It's not only that I'm unclear which things constitute a legitimate celebration of the theological message of an incarnate savior and which should be viewed as a corrupt distortion of the season. It's all too easy to say that the gifts and the hoopla aren't the point. More pertinent a question to me as I get older is why the gifts, the parties, the gaiety, and the general busyness of putting on the season are so compelling to us that we throw ourselves into them year after year. What does it say that they seem to fill a certain need for us in these dark weeks? Is that need really specific to Christians? There certainly seem to be plenty of people who embrace the holidays regardless of their religious proclivities. And if it is a more widespread need, is that to be so utterly discounted?

What I think Americans could use as a society is a means of comforting each other through the dark season and heralding the return of light, quite irrespective of our theologies or lack thereof. Yesterday Edith and I got a taste of that. We spent the day with my friend Alicia, who is from Sweden, and her daughter, Miranda. Due to unexpected circumstances, Alicia finds that for the first time she won't be able to spend the holidays with her family in Sweden. Feeling a bit blue about the absence of traditional markers of the season, she decided to import what she could to Philadelphia and to invite friends to join her in making merry, Swedish-style.

So Edith and I got to join in celebrating St. Lucia's Day. The Swedes seem to have done a decent job of distinguishing the celebration of a Christian Savior from the more general need to mark the passage of the winter's darkest hour. Its original Catholic roots notwithstanding, St. Lucia's Day on December 13 (somewhere along the way someone got confused about the date of the solstice) seems to have transcended religious connotations for most Scandinavians and to have become a common celebration of the day on which the light begins to return. Although we didn't keep vigil all night to make sure the sun would, in fact, return in the morning, and we didn't see St. Lucia and her court process through the streets with wreaths of candles aglow, we did make delicious Lussekatt, saffron and raisin St. Lucia buns, and Alicia obliged with some traditional fiddle tunes for the occasion.

Miranda was an expert at rolling out the dough for the buns. Edith's snakes appeared to be pythons that had just gorged themselves. Though getting covered in flour was good fun, both girls grew tired well before the mounds of dough had all been fashioned, leaving most of the artistry to the mamas.

Back in 2005 Lucia was one of the names on the short list for our baby. Obviously we didn't choose it--not only because there seemed to be a bevy of little Lucys being born at the time, but because Tom persuaded me that Americans would never pronounce it the Italian way that I find so lovely, LuCHEEa, but would tend to go with the Eastern European pronunciation, LOOSHa, which I like much less. The name is indeed pronounced with three syllables in this classic Sicilian carol, familiar to fans of Garrison Keillor, with which St. Lucia processions begin in Sweden. (Apologies for the photography--and for the fact that I started filming halfway through. But here's a taste.)

Even though Lucia is not her name, Edith continues to remind us of the light in the dark solstice season. She radiates sunshine day and night, not seeming to notice how quickly the dark falls. This week she has been blessedly immune to the heaviness of heart of many of those around her, though she is aware at some level of what is happening. Last night at bedtime we were talking for the second time about the fact that Gigi had died, and I asked if she remembered what that meant. She said that it meant Gigi was with God now and we can't see her, but we can remember her. A seemingly fine understanding. Then she asked brightly, by way of clarification, "But mommy, you didn't die, did you?"

This morning our church's associate pastor and Tom's mentor for ordination, Peggy, passed away of an aggressive cancer with which she was diagnosed seven weeks ago. The phone chain proceeded swiftly in the early morning hours, and almost no one came to church uninformed. What we didn't expect was to see Peggy's husband, Doug, and her children in the pews. In the evening we performed the annual choir Christmas concert, and again Doug was there. It was also our last occasion singing with our beloved choir director, Shelley, who is leaving us for a new position. It was a unusual night, singing out "Joy to the World!" as I looked out at Shelley's red teary face, Doug's closed eyes, and a sober crowd, and I thought of Grandma Opal and of Peggy.

But afterwards everyone gathered over food and talked and hugged and exchanged parting gifts. Edith ran around gleefully with Shelley's daughters and other children, her big-girl friends. Peggy would have liked to be there. The children of the church were her special joy. Her last outing was to come to the Christmas pageant last Sunday evening, an occasion about which a friend has written on his blog.

Maybe children are one of the things that help get us through the dark months, as surely as twinkling lights, sweet foods, bells and carols, evergreen branches, and good company. Whether in a manger tableau or running around in flesh and blood, they remind us that lux is perpetua--even when it appears to us older folk to be dim and distant.