Advent Light and Lucy

I am writing this a few hours late so yesterday was the feast day of St Lucy. Did you know that? 

I enjoyed the lights last night at the winter wonderland in the spa gardens where we sang carols for an hour and looking at the windows in Kirkby Malzeard before a concert. 

One tradition in church history is that a girl called Lucy would be crowned with a wreath with lit candles on it and in darkness would walk down the central aisle of her local church.

The seven candles on her crown represented how St Lucy would go out every night to give food to the hungry. The tradition holds that she used the money from her dowry for this charitable act and her intended husband was so cross about this, he informed the authorities of her faith, and she was martyred in 304. The catacombs in Syracuse, where the persecuted church met have early inscriptions mentioning her name.  

Lucy means “as of Light” and might therefore be a description of one martyred, shining as a light in the darkness of persecution. There are various other traditions connected to St Lucy from the sixth century onwards.

I am reminded remembering Lucy of what we shared in church at the start of Advent and what we will celebrate at Christmas itself
“The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”