Saint Lucy, Wreathed in Light

My first encounter with Saint Lucy was when I was about five years old, the Christmas my cousin and I got our first American Girl dolls. I received my much-wished-for Victorian era Samantha Parkington; my cousin, for reasons I have forgotten, got the blond-haired, blue-eyed Swedish immigrant Kirsten Larson (both of us were hazel-eyed brownies). In those days, all American Girl dolls had a Christmas story of some kind and historically authentic nightwear to go along with it; Kirsten’s long white nightie sported a red sash and came with a greenery wreath bristling with six white candles. According to her story, on St. Lucia Day, near the winter solstice, she would don the nightgown and sash, place the wreath—candles lit—upon her head, and then bring her family a special breakfast of Swedish saffron buns. Other than Saint Patrick’s Day, saints’ days were not something we observed in my house growing up, so I absorbed the images of the candles and the wreath as cultural symbols of someone else’s heritage, never wondering about their spiritual significance. 

Thirty-something years later, during a reading of Malcolm Guite’s Waiting on the Word, a collection of poems and meditations for Advent, I came upon his poem “Launde Abbey on St. Lucy’s Day.” Who is Saint Lucy? I wondered. For one with my limited knowledge of post-New Testament saints, Malcolm’s poem held few clues, so I did what any curious millennial would do and had a Google. What I found fascinated me.

For starters, the Saint Lucy of the poem and the Saint Lucia of my childhood memories were one and the same. But she wasn’t Swedish at all—she was instead from the ancient city of Syracuse on the island of Sicily. She was martyred during the Roman emperor Diocletian’s persecution of Christians in the early 300s AD, likely betrayed to the brutal government by a disappointed suitor. 

As with many extra-biblical accounts of the saints, the concrete details of her story can vary depending on which source you read. One version relates that Lucy was born into a wealthy family of the noble class, led her father, who died early in her childhood. Lucy came to Christ as a young woman. She wished to consecrate her virginity to God and distribute her dowry to the poor, but her mother, who was in frail health and wanted her daughter to be provided for, arranged her betrothal to a young man from a well-heeled pagan family without knowing of Lucy’s intentions. After seeing a vision of Saint Agatha, a virgin martyred fifty years earlier, Lucy was able to convince her mother to allow her to fulfill her dedication to the Lord. However, Lucy’s fiancé got wind of the news that she was giving her dowry away, and he denounced her to the governor of Syracuse. The governor, in turn, ordered her to burn a sacrifice to an image of the emperor; when Lucy refused, he condemned her to be defiled in a brothel.

Enter the miraculous: When the guards came to Lucy’s home to take her away and fulfill her sentence, they were unable to move her from where she stood, even with a team of oxen.

In a further attempt to budge her, the guards stacked firewood around Lucy, but it refused to burn. Finally, the earliest accounts say, they stabbed her in the throat with a sword, and she died. Later versions say that before her death, the guards tortured her by gouging out her eyes; others say she removed her eyes herself in order to dissuade a suitor. When her family was preparing her body for burial, they discovered that her eyes had been restored. For this reason, she’s the patron saint of the blind and those with eye illnesses. In much of her iconography, she’s depicted holding her new eyes, a gift from God, on a tray or on a slender branch. 

The Swedish tradition of the candlelit wreath and saffron buns stems from a story in which Lucy was delivering bread to persecuted Christians hiding in the catacombs. In order to bring as many supplies as possible, she figured out how to carry candles on her head instead of in her hand. Her name stems from the Latin word lux, which means “light.” In the days of the Julian calendar, her feast day, December 13, fell on the winter solstice, the longest night of the year; this made her role as “bringer of light” even more poignant.

Regardless of whether the miracles traditionally associated with Lucy’s story actually happened, we, like her, believe in a God who restores sight to the blind and raises the dead to life. We believe in a God who gives supernatural boldness in the face of evil and oppression. And we believe in a God who welcomes His saints to their eternal home with open arms, saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Lord.”

The story of Lucy’s unswerving devotion to her Lord and His people and her bravery in the face of shame and death inspired this series of images. May we each follow her example of bringing the light of God’s love into the dark places of this world, during Advent and Christmastide, and all the days beyond.

The featured image is courtesy of Amelia Freidline and is used with her kind permission for Cultivating.

Amelia Freidline

Amelia M. Freidline lives in the Kansas City suburbs with her parents and a feisty wee terrier named for the tallest mountain in Scotland. She studied journalism, English, and history at the University of Kansas and has worked as a word herder and comma wrangler in food media throughout her professional career. She’s a founding member of The Poetry Pub and has helped edit poetry collections for Bandersnatch Books. She is an amateur poet and writer, a photographer of faeryland, and a wielder of butter, and has self-published several small collections of original writing and photography. Raised on Lewis, Tolkien, Chesterton, Sayers, Conan Doyle and Wodehouse, Amelia hopes to be British if she grows up. She enjoys trees, adventures, marmalade, and great conversations. She loves Jesus because He loved her first.

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