Catholic News Agency reports on Swedish St. Lucy’s Day traditions involving children’s processions with candlelit wreaths, saffron buns (“Lussekatt”), and folk songs. The article describes the celebration’s evolution from pre-Christian winter solstice customs to its current form featuring “a young girl selected to be ‘Lucia'” leading processions in schools and public venues. While briefly acknowledging St. Lucy as a “virgin and martyr from Syracuse,” the piece focuses primarily on cultural elements: costumes, treats, and the song “Sankta Lucia” adapted from Neapolitan origins. The narrative emphasizes the festival’s folkloric aspects, including historical beliefs about “Lucia Night” being “a dangerous night when dark spirits would come out in full force” and the tradition’s 20th-century popularization. The article reduces the martyr’s witness to seasonal folklore, omitting her doctrinal significance.
Naturalistic Reduction of Martyrdom to Cultural Pageantry
The article’s description of the “elaborate processions” reveals a complete secularization of sacramental reality. By framing the celebration as primarily involving “children in costumes” and “Swedish treats,” the presentation reduces the martyr’s witness to paganized folklore. The Acta Sanctorum records Lucy’s martyrdom under Diocletian (304 AD) when she was blinded and killed for refusing marriage to a pagan, declaring: “I have vowed my chastity to the Bridegroom who chooses his brides with eternal rewards.” This supernatural dimension disappears in the CNA account, replaced by trivialities about “gingerbread men” carrying lanterns.
Pius XI’s encyclical Quas Primas (1925) condemns such secularization: “When God and Jesus Christ are removed from customs… the foundations of authority are destroyed.” The replacement of Lucy’s sacrificial witness with a “random draw” to select festival participants constitutes theft of sacred signifiers for naturalistic ends. The article’s claim that processions occur in “care homes and even restaurants” demonstrates the complete desacralization warned against in Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors (1864), which condemned the error that “the Church ought to be separated from the State” (Error 55).
Omission of Doctrinal Substance
Nowhere does the article mention that Lucy’s relics rest in Venice’s San Geremia church, authenticated by numerous miracles across centuries. The Roman Martyrology (1956 edition) explicitly commemorates: “At Syracuse, the birthday of St. Lucy, virgin and martyr, under the emperor Diocletian. For the Gospel she was denounced to Paschasius the consul, and after having overcome fire and other torments, she completed her martyrdom by the sword.” This liturgical witness contrasts sharply with CNA’s folkloric focus on “S-shaped saffron buns.”
The silence regarding Lucy’s Eucharistic piety proves damning. The Golden Legend (c. 1260) records her daily reception of Holy Communion – an impossibility under modern communion-in-the-hand practices. More gravely, the article never warns that participating in “Lucia processions” within Lutheran communities constitutes material cooperation with heresy. Pius XII’s Mediator Dei (1947) forbade Catholics from joining “false religious ceremonies” that endanger faith.
Modernist Contamination of Hagiography
The article’s description of the “Lucia” figure wearing “a wreath with lit candles” distorts the historical record. Lucy carried candles not for practical illumination but as sacramental symbols of Christ – the Light she witnessed unto death. By reducing this to functional lighting (“to light her way”), the account implicitly denies the martyr’s supernatural intent. This naturalistic distortion mirrors Modernist errors condemned in Pius X’s Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), which warned against reducing religion to “human experience.”
The musical adaptation exemplifies doctrinal corruption. While acknowledging “Sankta Lucia” derives from “Santa Lucia,” the article ignores the original Neapolitan song’s Marian piety (“Your silver glow lights the sea”). The Swedish version replaces this with secularized lyrics about “darkness heavy,” completing the evacuation of Catholic content. St. Pius X’s Tra le Sollecitudini (1903) explicitly forbade such liturgical adulterations: “The Church has always recognized and favored progress in the arts… but must reject modern vagaries.”
Syncretism with Pagan Winter Rituals
The article’s admission that Lucia processions evolved from pre-Christian “Lucia Night” traditions exposes dangerous syncretism. The description of participants “scrounging for food” while dressed as “Lucia figures” directly parallels pagan Yule celebrations condemned by Church Fathers. St. Augustine warned against such mixtures: “What has the light to do with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14). The 1917 Code of Canon Law (Canon 1258) absolutely forbade Catholics from participating in non-Catholic rites.
By celebrating winter solstice customs under Christian guise, Swedish Lutherans commit the error condemned in Pius IX’s Syllabus: “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion” (Error 18). The article’s uncritical presentation of these traditions – including the Lutheran “star boys” with “tall paper cones” – constitutes implicit endorsement of religious indifferentism.
Conclusion: Martyrdom Displaced by Modernist Anthropology
The CNA article exemplifies how conciliar journalism reduces sainthood to cultural anthropology. Lucy’s martyrdom – which inspired Dante’s Divine Comedy and numerous Eucharistic miracles – becomes mere seasonal folklore. This aligns with Vatican II’s Nostra Aetate error that non-Catholic religions “reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men.” Against this, Pope Leo XIII’s Testem Benevolentiae (1899) condemned those who “exalt pagan virtues” over Catholic sanctity.
Authentic veneration of St. Lucy requires rejecting these secularized festivals and embracing her witness: “No one’s body is polluted so as to endanger the soul if it has not pleased the mind. If you lift your hand against me, my chastity will be doubled” (Acts of St. Lucy). Only by restoring the primacy of her martyrdom over saffron buns can light conquer the modernist darkness enveloping Sweden.
Source:
Why Sweden honors St. Lucy, a beloved Italian saint (catholicnewsagency.com)
Date: 13.12.2025