St Lucia warms chilly Sweden

It’s been a whirlwind week of work and St Lucia celebrations. Sweden is crazy about the festival and churches are full of small children dressed up as St Lucia in white dresses with red sashes. Large companies have their own candle lit processions and everyone is really up for celebrating it even if they are a little hazy on the origins. It’s like Guy Fawkes Night/Bonfire Night in England or Halloween in America. The costumes associated with the celebrations are the Lucia dress, sash and candle, or white dress and pointed cone shaped hat with stars on it, a gingerbread man costume, or a Christmas costume of red and white. It’s a calm sort of festival, the St Lucia song is beautiful and gentle and so it’s quite nice to have this celebration in the build up to The Holidays.

Apart from the obvious excitement at discovering Gingerbread Men costumes for the first time – other highlights of my week included a fika with Karin, the book club meeting and a Sue Townsend book. And in ‘other news’ – Keita and Mike sadly left us to return to England; Gothenburg is lit up with Xmas lights and cheered by buskers; and although it’s a bit cold there hasn’t been any ice all week so cycling is still nice and easy.

Although it’s dark outside and I’d rather curl up with P G Wodehouse I’m just about to go out to see an exhibition of work by first year students on the C:Art:Media course here. The work is exhibited at the Rotor Gallery at Valand School of Fine Arts, and will, I’m sure, be very interesting.

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