15th door.

Sankta Lucia.

“In Sweden, Estonia, Denmark, Norway, and Finland, Lucy (called Lucia) is venerated on December 13 in a ceremony where a girl is elected to portray Lucia. Wearing a white gown with a red sash and a crown of candles on her head, she walks at the head of a procession of women, each holding a candle. The candles symbolize the fire that refused to take St. Lucia’s life when she was sentenced to be burned. The women sing a Lucia song while entering the room, to the melody of the traditional Neapolitan song Santa Lucia; the Italian lyrics describe the view from Santa Lucia in Naples, the various Scandinavian lyrics are fashioned for the occasion, describing the light with which Lucia overcomes the darkness. Each Scandinavian country has lyrics in their native tongues. After finishing this song, the procession sings Christmas carols or more songs about Lucia.” Wikipedia

© Jule Helmke

© Jule Helmke

 

© Jule Helmke

 

© Jule Helmke

© Jule Helmke

 

© Jule Helmke

 

 

 

 

 

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13th door.

Gingerbread houses.

Does anyone know where the tradition to build gingerbread houses for christmas comes from? And and is common in most countries even. This year you had the chance to send your masterpiece to the architecture museum for “The best gingerbread house” competition. And not only kids were participating! I didn’t end up voting, but I hope we will know soon who had won. Here are some of my favorites. Someone even made the death star from star wars out of gingerbread cookies, too much spare time maybe.. haha

© Jule Helmke

 

© Jule Helmke

 

© Jule Helmke

© Jule Helmke

 

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This little light of mine.

© Jule Helmke

As some of you might already know, was this past saturday the holiday All Saints’ Day. When I grew up, we didn’t celebrate this day at all, probably because most families in northern Germany aren’t very religious. In Sweden nobody really is a big Christian or whatever, but still, there’s something about All Saints’ Day, that brings them all together.

I saw those lights in a book the other day, when I was at a cafe. It was a book about Stockholm and all it’s special places. The picture showed a cemetery on All Saints’ day by night, illuminated by thousand and thousand of candles. I just knew, I had to see this one day.

© Jule Helmke

So this past Saturday my friend Melanie and me went to the cemetery at 10 p.m. with our flash lights (as recommended on the webpage) and boy, were we about to be amazed! I seemed like every single person in Stockholm had bought a candle and brought it there, I’m sure they were out of candles after that day..

© Jule Helmke

© Jule Helmke

People had put candles in trees, around trees, on benches and graves. Some kids had even written notes and drawn little pictures.

“Dear dad,

dear grandpa,

We miss you!

But you can sure see us from your cloud, right?”

© Jule Helmke

I’m sure nearly every grave was illuminated that night and a lot of loved ones were missed even more.

 

Other posts:

World Heritage.

Twinkle twinkle.