Lucia Dagen
December 14, 2008
Lucia Dagen celebrates
Festival highlighted by cold church service
By Kyle Weaver
Sitting in an unheated, barely air-tight church, listening to a pastor that many can’t understand seems like hardly a sane way to spend a December morning.
Yet for more than 20 years, Scandia residents and non-resident Swedes alike, have found a one-word answer for why they do it: heritage.
Lucia Fest, the traditional holiday festival put on last weekend by Scandia’s Gammelgarden, goes a long way toward helping those who attend it acknowledge their Swedish ancestry.
"It’s so important to people to have a national identity" said Gammelgarden director Lynne Bloomstrand-Moratzka. “It’s important to their identities.”
Though the rain-soaked Sunday morning somewhat hampered attendance this year, in a typical year, between 250-300 people attend the festivities, which includes a breakfast of traditional Swedish fare, a program by the Svenskarnasdag Girls Choir and an early morning church service.
The service is perhaps as authentic as they come - done by candlelight only, the services is spoken and sung all in Swedish in the unheated Gammelgarden church, with men and women traditionally segregated and in traditional garb.
Reverend Alex Treitler, who lived for a time in Sweden and learned the language in high school, conducted the service.
Bloomstrand-Moratzka has found herself fairly adept at finding Swedish-speaking ministers over the years, via a personal connection with Luther Seminary in St. Paul, to make the event all the more authentic.
"It’s been going on now in this form for more than 20 years," Bloomstrand-Moratzka said.
And for more than 10 of those years, it has been a tradition for Anne-Marie Bjornson and her family.
Bjornson, a Swedish-born immigrant who moved to Minnesota in 1952, has been attending the festival annually since 1996.
"This little celebration here is the most Swedish thing I have gone to in Minnesota,” Bjornson said. “This is exactly the way it would be in Sweden."
Bjornson said the festival has become an important tradition in her family. Her grandson, Christian Bjornson, who is studying Swedish at the University of Minnesota, agreed.
In the Swedish tradition, Lucia Dag (Day) is Dec. 13. It is named for St. Lucia, a 4th Century Sicilian maiden who came to Sweden and fed the poor by bringing coffee and luciakatta (buns) to them. She appears in white garb with a red sash and a crown of five or seven candles. The name Lucia, comes from the Latin word for light, and signifies a person who brought light into a darkened situation.
Bloomstrand-Moratzka also notes that it is one of the few holidays that doesn’t emanate from a military conflict.
"This just kind of kicks off the Swedish holiday season" which lasts about three weeks in Sweden, she said.
"It’s just a real positive celebration," Bloomstrand-Moratzka said. "It’s about someone who did good. What’s not to like?"
Reprinted with permission from Country Messenger