Forget Patrick—St. Joseph Has his Day and It’s Delicious

The Feast of St. Joseph, or the Festa Di San Giuseppe in Italy where it is a very big deal, is celebrated in honor of Joseph the Carpenter, husband to Mary and human father of Jesus.

St. Joseph’s Day is celebrated annually on March 19.  Joseph, the husband of Mary—does that make him Jesus’s stepfather?—is the Patron Saint of Poland, of carpenters, workers of all kinds, and of assorted other things.  In many Latin countries it is also the occasion to celebrate fathers.

A San Guuseppe street procession in Sicily.

Joseph is particularly revered in Sicily where he is credited with bringing an end to a drought and famine in the Middle Ages.  Devotion to him spread through southern Italy and was brought to the United States by immigrants.  Sicilians, who arrived in New Orleans in the late 19th Century promoted wide-spread celebrations in that city.  On the East Coast, particularly in Providence, Rhode Island, there are major parades featuring the wearing o’ the red—St. Joseph’s color—as more than a subtle tweak of the Irish, who attracted a lot of attention with their little festival two days earlier.  These parades actually were shows of political clout as the Italians muscled the Irish out of control of city governments. 

St. Joseph's Day is not just for Italians and Poles.  Here is an ethnic Czech parade in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Politics aside, the main feature of the celebration is St. Joseph’s Table, a feast set out in thanks for the miracle of saving Sicily.  Usually laid out buffet style and decorated with the good Saint’s statue, lily blossoms, and votive candles.  Food includes elaborate meatless offerings—it is Lent after all—including stuffed artichokes, pasta and fish, as well as breads, cookies, pastries, cakes and other delicacies.  Fava beans, the food St. Joseph provided to relieve the famine, are prominently featured. 

A St. Joseph's Day Table laid  out in front of a side alter at a Catholic church.

What makes the St. Joseph Table different from other feasts is that it is supposed to be laid out for the poor, homeless, and oppressed.  No one is turned away.  You don’t have to go to mass or even be Catholic.  You can smell like Richard’s Wild Irish Rose and stale piss, be covered in tattoos with nails piercing your face.  Who knows?  You can even be Gay or have had an abortion.  Come! Eat!  Share with us!

What a great holiday! 

Sankta Lucia—Murfin Winter Holidays Music Festival 2025-26

                                             Sankta Lucia sung in Swedish at a Church observation in Gothenburg (Göteborg).

Another day, another Saint.  Today we consider how a Sicilian virgin martyr and a Neapolitan song, became central to a Scandinavian folk custom that looks suspiciously pagan. 

No one is exactly sure, but the Feast of St. Lucy—Santa Lucia—observed annually on December 13, is ancient on one hand and surprisingly recent in its Norse guise. 

Almost nothing is known about St. Lucy.  She was reported to be the daughter of a wealthy and/or noble family from Syracuse in Sicily in the early Fourth Century.  Syracuse was a sophisticated city originally founded as a Greek city state.  Lucy may have been descendant of the Greek aristocracy, more recent Roman rulers, or both.  

Historically she has been pictured as a blonde, which suggests a Greek origin, although no one knows what she looked like. 

In this Renaissance painting martyred St. Lucy carries the eyes plucked from her head on a tray but miraculously can still see.

Lucy—her name in Latin meant light—was evidently a devout Christian during a time when members of the Church were still being persecuted in the Roman Empire.  The traditional story has it that her pagan mother arranged a marriage to a rich and powerful pagan man.  Lucy protested and vowed to save herself for Christ.  After she prayed for a miracle that saved her mother’s life, her mother relented.  But the jilted suitor was enraged.  

Here the story breaks down into many versions.  Either the swain tortured and killed Lucy, or he ratted her out as a Christian to local authorities.  Those authorities, or the far-off Emperor Diocletian himself, ordered her execution and/or torture.  Depending on the tale her eyes were first plucked out—a story that would later make her the patron saint of the blind—then she was stabbed in the throat with a sword while she was proclaiming her love of Christ.  Or she was burned alive, but the fire would not consume her, and she continued to testify.  In the end, no matter the details, she was a martyr to her faith and virginity. 

Within a century she was the center of a cult venerating her as a saint, centered in Rome.  Veneration of her spread throughout the Empire, which by then was officially Christian.  Her feast day became one of the most important on the calendar.  Many legends sprang up about her and the miracles she performed. 

One might assume that the Scandinavian veneration of her feast day dated to the era when the Norse countries were still Catholic.  But although her feast was undoubtedly on the liturgical calendar, there is no evidence of special celebrations during that time.  

Some historians believe that stories of St. Lucy may have entered the folk culture of the North after the Viking Normans conquered the island and established the Kingdom of Sicily in 1160.  As a matter of fact, there is historic evidence of the Normans introducing those stories and elevating the status of St. Lucy’s feast in Britain, where her feast day was thought to coincide with the shortest day of the year, which was pretty close under the old Julian calendar.  Unfortunately, there is no hard evidence that this was communicated to the Normans’ stay-at-home cousins in Scandinavia. 

The Feast of Santa Lucia in its current form did not seem to be celebrated until after Norway, in 1537, and Sweden, in 1597 adopted Lutheranism as the state religion.  But Lutherans do not typically venerate saints. 

Online of conjecture has it that in response to Luther’s ban on St. Nicholas as a winter holiday gift giver, he was replaced by Kindchen Jesus, or Christkind, a German Lutheran cousin.  This theory holds that in Sweden young women or girls were robed in white to portray the Christ child and that somehow, over centuries, this morphed into a portrayal of the Sicilian Saint.  On the face of it this seems ludicrous, but stranger things have happened, I suppose. 

In a 19th Century card, Santa Lucia is seen bringing her food gifts at dawn to the family home.

Most likely veneration of St. Lucy surrounding the coincidence of her Feast Day with the Solstice in the old Julian calendar was introduced by sailors visiting Swedish ports—or in some accounts rescued from shipwrecks.  Others attribute it to Swedish mercenary soldiers returning from southern wars.  

Take your pick. 

As developed and practiced in Sweden by the early 19th Century Santa Lucia arrived at a home in the dark with a donkey laden with delicacies and small presents.  It was the custom was for the eldest daughter of the family in a white robe for purity, a red sash for martyrdom, and a crown of glowing candles entered the master bedroom of a home at dawn leading a procession of other women and girls of the family each carrying a candle.  The flaming crown was said to represent the return of light to darkness of the longest day of the year—an idea fraught with pre-Christian, pagan symbolism.  Or, to take a more Christian interpretation, it is meant to symbolize the fire that could not consume St. Lucy as in some versions of the tale. 

The leading girl with her crown comes bearing gifts of sweets, coffee, and cakes.  She and the others in the procession sing a song about the saint.  In recent times it is the Neapolitan song Santa Lucia with lyrics adapted locally.  After the gifts were presented to the parents in their bed, the girls would go on to sing other songs, usually Christmas carols. 

This form of celebration evidently originated in the area around Lake Vänern in the late 18th Century and spread slowly to other parts of the country and eventually to Norway, Finland, Denmark, and areas around the Baltic.  Each region adopted variations in tradition. 

This festival was then a home observance and not part of either church or public ritual.   

Public Santa Lucia festivals have largely replaced the traditional home observances.  

Public observations in Sweden did not begin until a Stockholm newspaper promoted one in 1927.  Now most cities and many schools elect a Santa Lucia each year for popular public processionals.  The eve of the festival has become a popular party night, particularly with young people and university students. 

In Norway, where the tradition never took as deep a root, the private celebrations of Santa Lucia had nearly faded away in all but isolated and remote rural areas.  But during the Nazi occupation of World War II, the custom was revived as statement of cultural pride.  The symbolism of bringing light into the darkness obviously had political implications.  The collaborationist Quisling government tried to outlaw the practice. Which, of course, only made it more popular. After liberation, public Santa Lucia processionals became popular and the home custom has nearly faded to extinction. 

The Scandinavian countries, despite still having official Lutheran state churches, are today among the most thoroughly secular in the world.  Santa Lucia Day, never an official holiday, has been stripped of virtually all religious meaning and is celebrated as a joyous ethnic festival.  In fact, the neo-pagan symbolism of the occasion has probably only made it more popular than ever. 

  
Scandinavian immigrants brought the custom to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries where it took particular hold in rural areas with large, supportive immigrant populations especially in the cold states of the Upper Midwest—Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas.  In big cities, even ones with large immigrant communities, the custom tended to fade by the second generation as it assimilated into the general population. 

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Today some heavily Swedish and/or Norwegian small towns celebrate with the yearly selection of a comely Santa Lucia and a public ritual and those Lutheran liberal arts colleges of Scandinavian origin with an abundance of blond co-eds and a well-developed choral singing tradition make the song central to their Christmas concerts. 

Enrico Caruso's oft reissued 1903 recording by opera tenor Enrico Caruso.

  
The song Santa Lucia was a Neapolitan street song, the first song from that dialect to be translated into modern Italian in 1849 as the Italian unification crusade was in its early days.  The translator, Teodoro Cottrau, was the son of French-born Italian composer and collector of songs Guillaume Louis Cottrau.  He is sometime credited as the song’s writer and composer, but little-known A. Longo is also sometimes credited with the melody in 1835.  Other sources believe it was much older. 

The original lyrics were not really about the martyr saint at all but celebrated the picturesque waterfront district, Borgo Santa Lucia, in the Gulf of Naples as an invitation by a boatman to sail with him to enjoy the cool of the evening.  By the late 19th Century, it was popular across Italy and was introduced to other European nations on the variety stages and concert halls. 

Thomas Oliphant, the Scottish musician, writer, and composer who is credited with Deck the Halls made a translation of the song into English in the 1870s which was also introduced in the United States.   But it was opera tenor Enrico Caruso’s 1903 recording that made the song an international sensation. 

  
In Sweden adaptations of local song lyrics honoring the Saint were set to the Neapolitan melody. Several local variants were sung the best known of which is Luciasången, also known by its first words, Sankta Lucia, ljusklara hägring (Saint Lucy, bright illusion).  The common Norwegian version is Svart senker natten seg (Black the night descends.)  Other words are sung in Finland, Denmark, the Faroe Islands, and in Austria. 

  
Today we feature Sankta Lucia sung in Swedish during a church processional that was featured on national television.