Santa Lucia day!

We celebrated Santa Lucia day on Thursday the 13th. Our advent activity was to learn more about how another culture celebrates Christmas and since Jason's family is Swedish and we live in the center of Swede town we made a day of it!  A little bizarre to be celebrating a saint that legend says was burnt alive and then had a spear thrust through her throat because she did not want to give it up but, ya know, we embraced some parts of the story more than others. Plus fire on your head and singing is an irresistible combo, no?

We set our alarms for 5:40 am and went in our PJ's to Tre Kroner in Chicago because I; in an act of Mama genius stealth found out they celebrate a pre-sunrise breakfast complete with singing Santa Lucia girls. The girls were not huge fans of the "weird cinnamon rolls" with fruit in them but were soon swooning for the singing girls with candles on their heads.
 
Pj's, bed head, a Singing Swede, and happy girls.

Later in the day we joined some friend right behind our house at the Swedish American Museum for the Festival of Lights parade and in a burst of Mama energy (brought on by my hubby dropping by with a latte- I love that man) we made our own Santa Lucia crowns using stuff around the house- glue sticks with tissue paper "fire" (it took some convincing for the girls to acquiesce to not having real fire on their heads but in the end I won out) and some braided fabric with some Swedish flags thrown in for the heck of it.

And we even carried REAL candles with fire (for about 3 minutes until the winter wind exposed that for the bad idea it was (still fun though!)

We walked in a procession following these young ladies who sang and two little girls loved the holiday wonder of it all! More Advent-ures tomorrow!