Santa Lucia and The Nobel Prize Too

Today, December 13, is Saint Lucy’s Day (Santa Lucia in Swedish) in Sweden. On this day girls or young women dress up in white robes and the chosen St. Lucy places a crown of candles or lights in her hair, The other girls/women are referred to as “Tärnor”. Boys dress up in white robes and wear white cones on their heads. Some of the boys dress up as gnomes. Then they march through the streets or inside buildings. They sing songs and hand out Lucia buns, gingerbread cookies and other goodies. They typically do this early in the morning while it is still dark. If the Lucia group is inside, you typically turn off the lights to create the right ambiance.

St. Lucy dressed in a white robe with a red belt and with lights in her hair. With her she has a lot of Tärnor (dressed in white robes) and stjärngossar (dressed in white robes with white cones on their heads)
Lucia celebration: By Claudia Gründer – Claudia Gründer, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3221537

This evening my daughter surprised me by baking the traditional saffron buns, so called Lusse Bullar or Lucia Buns in English. She prepared a Swedish meatball dinner and dressed up as St. Lucia. I had completely forgotten about St. Lucy, so it was a surprise. She did not want her picture online, so I am including online photos of St. Lucia.

A row of girls and boys dressed in white robes. The boys have cones on their heads.
A Lucia procession. Fredrik Magnusson, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
St. Lucy in a white robe with lights in her hair followed by boys and girls in whote robes.
Lucia procession at award ceremony. Holger Motzkau 2010, Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons (cc-by-sa-3.0), CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Two plates of Lucia buns (Lusse bullar), each with two raisins.
The Lucia buns my daughter baked. (My photo of course)
One of the Lucia Buns my daughter baked. It is yellow because it contains saffron.
One of the Lucia Buns my daughter baked.
Meatball dinner that my daughter prepared. There are rice, meatballs and a brown sauce on a plate.
Meatball dinner that my daughter prepared.

St. Lucy takes place during the Nobel Week. The Nobel award ceremony happen on December 10. It should be noted that we often speak of the Nobel Prize, but there are six Nobel Prizes. The prizes for Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Economics, are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden. The Nobel Peace prize is awarded in Oslo, Norway.

Anyway, On December 13 a St. Lucy parade visit and sometimes surprise the Nobel Prize winners in Stockholm who are staying for a few days (they stay at the Grand Hotel). In the past, these surprises did not always work out well, as the St. Lucy group of white dressed women sometimes frightened laurates from East Asia. In East Asia white dressed women are often thought of as ghosts (yūrei and onryō). Think of Samara Morgan in the Ring movies. Therefore, they modified how the Lucia train (as it is called) marches through the hotel. For example, they no longer show up in people’s rooms unannounced.

As a little piece of interesting information this is a list of this year’s Nobel Prize winners.

  • Physics: Pierre Agostini; Ferenc Krausz; Anne L’Huillier – “for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter.”
  • Chemistry: Moungi Bawendi; Louis E. Brus; Alexey Ekimov – “for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots.”
  • Physiology or Medicine: Katalin Karikó; Drew Weissman – “for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19”
  • Literature: Jon Fosse – for “his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable”.
  • Economics: Claudia Goldin – “for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes”.
  • Peace Prize: Narges Mohammadi – “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all.
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Author: thomasstigwikman

My name is Thomas Wikman. I am a software/robotics engineer with a background in physics. I am currently retired. I took early retirement. I am a dog lover, and especially a Leonberger lover, a home brewer, craft beer enthusiast, I’m learning French, and I am an avid reader. I live in Dallas, Texas, but I am originally from Sweden. I am married to Claudia, and we have three children. I have two blogs. The first feature the crazy adventures of our Leonberger Le Bronco von der Löwenhöhle as well as information on Leonbergers. The second blog, superfactful, feature information and facts I think are very interesting. With this blog I would like to create a list of facts that are accepted as true among the experts of the field and yet disputed amongst the public or highly surprising. These facts are special and in lieu of a better word I call them super-facts.

46 thoughts on “Santa Lucia and The Nobel Prize Too”

  3. What a wonderful surprise to see St. Lucy in the title of your post!! That’s because I’m Catholic, and yesterday was the Feast of St. Lucy. It’s something only Catholics are aware of in the U.S., so I was delighted to read your post and how beautifully it is celebrated in Sweden. But now I’m curious. WHY do they celebrate St. Lucy there? I never think of Sweden as a Catholic country. Am I wrong?

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    1. Oh, that’s interesting. You are right it is a catholic tradition. Back before the reformation Sweden was catholic (before 1500) and St. Lucy was a very popular celebration. It stuck around despite the reformation and now it is one of the most popular traditions in Sweden. In fact, every city has a Lucia parade, sometimes very large, every large company, hospital, church, and almost every home have Lucia celebrations with singing, parades, with the kids and young adults dressing up, and there is a top Lucia for Sweden crowned, like a miss Sweden but she is dressed in white with candles in her hair.

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      1. Wow!!!! I love that!!! I can only imagine how much fun those celebrations are. And I’m amazed the tradition continued even after Sweden became Protestant. But then, as you know, St. Patrick is a Catholic Saint too, yet it is a huge nationwide non-religious celebration here in the US. Although the main focus of all the activities, parades, etc., is drinking, especially green beer. lol!!!

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  5. Long ago and far away, we had a Santa Lucia celebration when I was in grade school. This was in Wisconsin. Traditionally, there is a large Scandinavian population in the area. I was much too young to understand anything other than eating pastry and watching girls a year or two older than I walking into an assembly in white dresses holding candles they weren’t permitted to light.

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      1. If memory serves, it was some sort of Christmas-around-the-world program. I vaguely remember singing “O Tannenbaum” in German.

        Yes, a lot of Swedes in Minnesota. the winters must remind them of home. 🙂

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  8. What an interesting tradition! I wasn’t familiar with Santa Lucia celebrations and appreciate learning about them. Showing up in someone’s hotel room unannounced would indeed be startling, so it’s good they discontinued that practice. 😆 Your daughter arranged a lovely surprise! The buns and meatballs look delicious. Smaklig måltid!

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    1. Thank you Debbie. It is great that you some Swedish “Smaklig måltid”. Yes you are right. I am not sure whose bright idea that was. It backfired and they changed it. I wish someone had filmed it though (maybe not), but that was before cell phones.

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  9. Does look very lovely.

    Always wondered about the safety issues with those crowns of candles though…
    🕯️🕯️🕯️👑🕯️🕯️🕯️

    💫🌿✨🦎☀️💖☮️⚛️♾️🦀🐉🙏🏻😌🙋‍♂️

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  13. Very interesting! I would not want candles in my hair, though. Glad to see in the comments that they use electric lights now. The meatball dinner and buns look delicious. What a nice surprise!

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    1. Thank you so much Mary Ann. You are right. In the old days, the candle in the hair was a fire hazard and many girls damaged their hair. Like you said it was a really nice surprise and I had totally forgotten about the whole thing.

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  14. Thanks for the post! I enjoyed learning about St. Lucy’s Day. As it turns out, I’ve met three physics Nobel Laureates. Two after they won the prize: Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and William Fowler; and one before he won the prize: Saul Perlmutter. In fact, I took some of the observations that Perlmutter worked with to earn the prize.

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    1. Wow that is quite interesting. I know a little bit about all three. It is very impressive that you contributed to Saul Perlmutter’s work and Nobel Prize. I participated in a zoom lecture held by Steven Weinberg but I have not actually met a Nobel Prize winner.

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  15. What a lovely thing for your daughter to do, Thomas. The Lucia buns look so pretty! I wasn’t aware of this tradition and appreciated the information you provided. The response of the Japanese visitors was such a great example of how misinterpretations can happen between cultures. Lovely photos and an entertaining post. 🙂

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    1. Thank you so much Diane. Yes, cultural misinterpretations happen easily, and Swedes aren’t the best in this area. My daughter was saying that having a bunch of people entering a hotel room when it it’s dark sounds like a bad idea in any culture.

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  19. Glad I caught this one, Tom! Thanks for bringing a bit of Swedish warmth to my day. You daughter looks like a fabulous cook and those bun, wow, they look delicious, and I can practically smell them from here!

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