Now you can carry on almost as every other morning, going to work, school and daycare. At the daycare, the kids will perform the same ritual for their parents, except that everyone – boys and girls alike – want to be Lucia with electric candles in their hair.  In school, your kids will prepare to repeat the same procedure for senior citizens at some nearby old people’s home. At work, another procession with a girl dressed as Lucia will arrive singing the same songs, and you’ll drink more coffee and eat more saffron buns and ginger bread, and you’ll probably also get a small glass of glögg, which is a spiced sweet wine served hot with raisins and almonds.

But it doesn’t end there. At the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, the Nobel Prize laureates have already been chocked by a choir of girls in white robes with candles, entering their bedroom in what seemed to be the middle of the night, singing and offering a breakfast of saffron buns, coffee, and hot sweet wine with gingerbread. After all the girls came a horde of photographers, and the whole occasion is reported in detail in the afternoon’s papers, with pictures.

In fact, you will meet Lucia processions almost everywhere. The town’s Lucia, elected by the readers of a local newspaper, will be crowned in the city square. A Lucia procession will occur at rush hour in every mall. And you don’t want to see a gingerbread cookie for another week.

Last updated by Thomas at December 10, 2012.