Saint Lucy

Little is known for certain about Lucy except that she was a young Christian of Syracuse, Sicily, martyred around 304 under Emperor Diocletian. Tradition says she vowed her life to God, gave her dowry to the poor and was denounced by the man she refused to marry. Her name is in the First Eucharistic Prayer.

Her name comes from the Latin lux, light, and her feast falls in the darkest days of the year. In Sweden, and among Scandinavian-Americans in Minnesota and the Northwest, a girl in a white gown with a crown of candles leads a Lucia procession and serves saffron buns (lussekatter). Sicilian-Americans eat cuccia, sweetened wheat berries, recalling a ship of grain that ended a famine on her feast.