Saturday, December 13, 2008

Happy St. Lucia Day!

Every year on December 13 we celebrate St. Lucia Day.  My husband has some Swedish blood in his family.  Funny thing though, he didn't even know what St. Lucia Day was until I told him about it when we were first married.  

I'm all about starting traditions and being cultural.  Someday my kids will thank me for it.
I think.
I'd love to give you the history of the holiday.  But it's bath night for my 3-year old, and I haven't fed the dog, and I don't even have the lights on the Christmas tree yet, and I have 40 Christmas card envelopes to address, and my kitchen is a mess ... and well, I'm just tired.  So you can Google it if really want to know more.

But I will tell you that the holiday involves baking these Lucia buns.
I made 4 dozen this year.  
(minus the one in the middle that was my "tester" bun.  Yeah, I ate it.)
It's a yeast dough flavored with cardamom and shaped into an "S" and studded with raisins.
If you could walk into my house right now ... you'd trip over 3 pairs of shoes, a box of ornaments and a large plastic horse ... but you'd also smell these wonderful buns.  Heavenly!

Now ... I have to go do all that stuff I mentioned above and then polish off at least 2 dozen of these yummy buns.

Happy St. Lucia Day!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

These are beautiful, how did you get it done with all that stuff looming?

Anonymous said...

Ooooh, those look yummy! And I love the phrase you used, "... studded with raisens!" Makes them sound even yummier!

Handsome's wife said...

St. Lucia is the holiday that they celebrated in the movie "The Ref"
Those buns look very yummy. Too bad I don't live closer.

Keys to the Magic Travel said...

Katie just studied Sweden last week for Geography...and this week we are doing Christmas traditions from around the world. I wonder if the girls would like the cardamon spice or not...

Anonymous said...

Linda, Yes, your kids will thank you. Those memories will last a lifetime. 25 years ago (omg, has it been that long?)I took my preteen girls to a St Lucia celebration as part of a "restore our heritage" life phase. The following year I asked which of the OTHER ethnicities that make up our family tree we should celebrate. A resounding SWEDEN AGAIN. Ever since, we have celebrated St Lucia as our gift-giving day and Christmas as our religious observance day. And did I mention "we" now includes spouses and five grandchildren!