Today is December 13th and in our house we celebrate Santa Lucia. This tradition was first introduced to our family by our Swedish relatives and reinforced by our Italian family and also by the fact that we named our daughter Lucia. Since I generally avoid sharing photos of my children on the internet I thought I would try and persuade this little Lucia to play the part for you.

As you can see, she had some trouble with her crown of candles falling off…

…and then almost anything was more interesting than looking at the camera.

This morning our family dressed up (our sons in Star Boy costumes and our daughter as Lucia with her crown of light) and we set out before school in the dark to share light and food with our neighbours. The traditional Swedish foods to take are lussekatter (saffron buns) and pepparkakor (spiced biscuits) which we made in vast quantities over the previous days. It is a lovely start to the Christmas season for us; a breakfast shared with friends or family and full of light, warmth and food to chase away the darkness.

Since little Lucia has now made her first appearance I will let you in on a secret. She is the first of my new CE certified, toy safety standard dolls and will be up for sale in my Etsy shop sometime before December 18th. So keep an eye out here and on my social media if you don’t want to miss her. I’m afraid she won’t be travelling with her Santa Lucia crown for two reasons. Firstly, those electric lights would definitely not pass the CE toy safety standards test, and secondly they are still attached to our Christmas tree!