Healing Arts and Pagan Studies ~ Celebration of St Lucy's Eve  (Lucina)

In Austria, witches were thought to be especially powerful on St Lucy's Eve as they were in England on Halloween and May Eve. Incense was often burnt in houses to defeat them. A mysterious light called the Lucy-shining was supposed to appear outdoors at midnight and those who had the courage to watch for it could foretell the future from its varying forms.

In Italy, St Lucy is the gift-giver who comes in the night, like St Nicholas (see Dec 6) or Santa Claus. Children leave bunches of carrots, hay and bowls of milk for the donkey on which she travels around the countryside. In Bergamo and the surrounding countryside, children leave their shoes on the kitchen window with hay and in the morning find inside tiny sweets the size of a coin tied to their shoelaces.

In Denmark, she brings prophetic dreams to women who recite this prayer before retiring on St Lucy's eve:

Sweet St Lucy, let me know

Whose cloth I shall lay

Whose bed I shall make

Whose child I shall bear

Whose darling I shall be

Whose arms I shall lie in.

By Carol Field, "Celebrating Italy", William Morrow and Company 1990

From: GrannyMoon’s Morning Feast Archives