Scandinavian Christmas, Day 1

Happy St. Lucia Day!

And welcome to the very first day of the Scandinavian Christmas series 2011! This series is going to be packed full of fun Scandinavian recipes, crafts and traditions shared by fellow bloggers. I would love for you to join in the series by adding your own photos to the Scandinavian Christmas 2011 Flickr group here. Check back for fun photos and ideas!

Today I will be sharing a bit about St. Lucia day and some traditions that go along with it.

For those of you unfamiliar with St. Lucia Day, here is how it is described according to the makers of this ornament:

"Celebrated in Scandinavian homes during the early hours of December 13th, longest night of the year, a young woman dressed in a white gown, brings coffee and sweet breads to her parents. She wears a crown of twigs or holly glowing with candles. Following, her brothers wear tall, pointed caps (star boys), her sisters dressed in white, carry lit candles. She represents Saint Lucia, born in Sicily, who lived in first century Rome, a young Christian martyr burned at the stake because she would not give up her faith to marry an unbeliever. In Sweden, the feast day of Lucia is celebrated as a festival of lights."

Growing up, we always celebrated with cardamom bread, copious amounts of coffee, and pepparkakor. I know traditionally Swedes usually have lusskatter, but I never seem to have saffron on hand to whip some up. So cardamom bread always makes a nice substitute I think.

In honor of St. Lucia day, I will be sharing how to make a Lucia crown card with felt.

You will need:

cardstock (either in red or green)

felt in green and white cut into shapes below

yellow wool roving or felt

Start by arranging your "candles" on the cardstock in the center. Use hot glue to stick them to the cardstock.

Next, begin hot gluing your felt leaves over the bottom of the candles.

Continue gluing on the leaves until you have the desired shape of your crown. I used 8 leaves.

Pull off tiny bits of the yellow roving and glue to ends of your white candles. They may need to be trimmed down a bit with scissors.

I stamped "God Jul" at the bottom for the heck of it. You could just as easily leave it blank or write your own message at the bottom.

Send the card to someone you love!

Thank you so much for joining me today in the Scandinavian Christmas 2011 series! Tomorrow we will be hearing from Pam over at Gingerbread Snowflakes with a very tasty Danish treat!