In which we do some delicious cultural/religious anthropology and determine... Swedes and Italian's ain't identical.
First, as avid readers of our blog will remember, we are quite fond of the Swedish Santa Lucia tradition in our household. (It is the inspiration for our Christmas tree topper, several elementary school presentations, a regular December home celebration, and our tattoo.) We noticed last year that local Italians also have a Santa Lucia festival, which happens in June. Naturally, we've been wanting to go, and today was our chance.
The Swedish festival, to recap: usually happens in church; involves a flaming crown; has a great set of traditions like lussekatter (eyes on a bun!) and Starboys (little brothers in choir robes!) and is scheduled for the darkest night of the (Gregorian) year.
The Italian festival, if the local one is any indication, is like this: a carnival! In summer! With awesome Italian food! And beer! And a tiara from the 1950's! And a statue who gets paraded around! And karoke!
I had an Italian sausage and [red] pepper sandwich that was - really, really good. A longtime festival-goer recommended it, and she did not steer me wrong. Grace had fried ravioli, and if that sounds odd, it ... was odd. Still decent. Peter had a hot dog, that being his default Kid Food. And the kids had some ice cream. We also chatted up the reigning Lucia Festival Queen, who was as lovely and polished and friendly a young person as I have met in some time. And y'all will remember that I teach college, so those are words of high praise indeed. She mentioned that as her gift to the festival, she had the tiara professionally restored, which I found just delightful.
So it wasn't totally clear to me what any of this had to do with Lucia, the (possibly fictional) young woman martyred in the third century of the common era. There was an organ transplant advocacy organization sponsering the festival, and Lucia did allegedly have her eyes taken out, so there's that... but it was fun and yummy and the kids enjoyed it, so what else could I ask, really?
