St. Lucia Day Celebration

So, aside from just taking photos, I did have a little St. Lucia Day celebration.  It was kind of in lieu of the mother-daughter bookgroup for December.  

Here are the finished nightgowns.  I was very pleased with how they turned out, not that they're complex, but still.

Eliza and Kaitlin came over, along with their moms and siblings, and we had a dinner (Swedish meatballs of course, braided bread rolls (from Walmart, I was going to make a traditional recipe (here), but it didn't happen) and some fancy red jello.  Then we watched a short video explaining what St. Lucia day is -- you should watch, it's short and interesting.  https://sweden.se/culture-traditions/lucia/

So the girls dressed up and enjoyed parading around for us, taking turns being the leader.

I had checked out a lot of books having to do with Swedish Christmas traditions, which always include the tomte.  A very short summary-- Tomte or Nisse are gnomes that take care of the farm and home. At Christmas you must leave a bowl of steaming hot rice porridge for them or they will play harmless tricks on you like letting the animals out or switching the salt and sugar.

We have the books 'The Tomten' by Astrid Lindgren that I love, and here is a companion story.

This one was really cute by Sven Nordquist.

 

 

 

So we made some tomtens of our own, and they were adorable!  (Instructions can be found here:  http://www.mamaroots.com/files/tomten-1.pdf)

 It was a really fun night that the kids and I enjoyed a lot!  Next December, you should think about celebrating St. Lucia Day!