The gate of the year

Painting of Giovanni di Bartolomeo Cristiani, realized around 1375 and now in the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, USA, representing Saint Lucy sitting on the throne.
According to the legend, the Saint was a Christian maiden from Syracuse, who was persecuted and martyred during the empire of Diocletian. The tale according to which her jailor gauged her eyes seems to be a later adjunct, which probably had only the purpose to emphasize the association between her name and the term for “light”. Her feast, on December 13, is still today remembered in the well-known folk saying of “the shortest day that there is”: indeed, before the introduction of the Gregorian calendar, in 1582, the feast was on December 20, and was thus nearer to the winter solstice (Cardini 1995, p. 91-92). One version of the legend relates that the Saint gauged her eyes by herself, to discourage a pagan pretender who wished to marry her. It is singular that the same episode was attributed also to Saint Brigid of Kildare, whose feast marked another celebration of light, that of Candlemas.
In the countries of Northern Europe, particularly in Sweden, the feast of Saint Lucy is still nowadays celebrated with processions of young girls, clothed in white, and with a crown of candles around their head, who intone the well-known hymn to the Saint.

[Image: http://library.artstor.org]




Feasts

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Painting of Giovanni di Bartolomeo Cristiani, realized around 1375 and now in the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, USA, representing Saint Lucy sitting on the throne. According to the legend, the Saint was a Christian maiden from Syracuse, who was persecuted and martyred during the empire of Diocletian. The tale according to which her jailor gauged her eyes seems to be a later adjunct, which probably had only the purpose to emphasize the association between her name and the term for “light”. Her feast, on December 13, is still today remembered in the well-known folk saying of “the shortest day that there is”: indeed, before the introduction of the Gregorian calendar, in 1582, the feast was on December 20, and was thus nearer to the winter solstice (Cardini 1995, p. 91-92). One version of the legend relates that the Saint gauged her eyes by herself, to discourage a pagan pretender who wished to marry her. It is singular that the same episode was attributed also to Saint Brigid of Kildare, whose feast marked another celebration of light, that of Candlemas. In the countries of Northern Europe, particularly in Sweden, the feast of Saint Lucy is still nowadays celebrated with processions of young girls, clothed in white, and with a crown of candles around their head, who intone the well-known hymn to the Saint. [Image: http://library.artstor.org]