Livre d'Or

She was in theory martyred in Syracuse by being blinded and stabbed through the throat. She is associated with light, because of the blinding thing and the name.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Lucy

My family used to celebrate our namedays. I will possibly try to buy cakes for friends tomorrow, especially my dear friend Lucy who lives down the road. My Polish godmother sends me a nameday card every year and I got this year's yesterday :)

We have, somewhere, a Lucia crown. (We once had a Swedish au pair and she brought it for us.) It's a green plastic circlet with five battery-operated candle simulacra set therein. It looks ok if you wrap the circlet in greenery; but you can, if I remember rightly, only get the bulbs in Sweden, so it's a bit awkward. We used to sometimes have a Lucia party as I knew lots of Lucys.

I once went to a sixthform literary society meeting (staff/student thing) dressed as St Lucy (it was a winter theme of some sort), and my performance piece was to sing a version of the Santa Lucia song that, annoyingly, I cannot find online. As described on Wikipedia, it's the Italian folksong about the place Santa Lucia, with new Scandinavian lyrics, and then it's a very nice English translation/versification. But I can't find it :( Perhaps it's in one of our Christmas books somewhere, I will have to look.