Lucia´s day

Saint Lucy's Day (Sankta Lucia, also known as Saint Lucia's Day etc) is the Church feast day holiday dedicated to St. Lucy and is observed on December 13. It marks, together with Advent, the beginning of the Christmas season. Traditionally an important feast day in all of Western Christendom, it now retains traditional forms of celebration mainly in Scandinavia and southern Europe. It is celebrated in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Italy, Bosnia, Iceland, and Croatia. Before the reform of the Gregorian calendar in the 16th century, St. Lucy's Day fell on the winter solstice on the Northern Hemisphere.
In traditional celebrations, Saint Lucy typically comes as a young woman with lights and sweets. It is one of the few saint days observed in Scandinavia.

SWEDEN
Some trace the “re-birth” of the Lucia celebrations in Sweden to the tradition in German Protestant families of having girls dressed as angelic Christ children, handing out Christmas presents. The Swedish variant of this white-dressed “Kindchen Jesus”, or Christkind, was called “Kinken Jes”, and started to appear in upper-class families in the 1700s on Christmas Eve with a candle-wreath in her hair, handing out candy and cakes to the children. Another theory claims that the Lucia celebration evolved from old Swedish traditions of “star boys” and white-dressed angels singing Christmas carols at different events during Advent and Christmas. In either case, the current tradition of having a white-dressed lady with candles in her hair appearing on the morning of the Lucia day started in the area around Lake Vänern in the late 1700s and spread slowly to other parts of the country during the 1800s.
In the Lucia procession in the home depicted by Carl Larsson in 1908 (illustration, above), the oldest daughter brings coffee and St. Lucia buns to her parents, while wearing a candle-wreath and singing a Lucia song. Other daughters may help, dressed in the same kind of white robe and carrying a candle in one hand, but only the oldest daughter wears the candle-wreath.
The modern tradition of having public processions in the Swedish cities started in 1927 when a newspaper in Stockholm elected an official Lucia for Stockholm that year. The initiative was then followed around the country through the local press. Today most cities in Sweden appoint a Lucia every year; schools elect a Lucia and her maids among the students; and a national Lucia is elected on national television from regional winners. The regional Lucias will usually visit local shopping malls, old people's homes and churches, singing and handing out ginger snaps. Recently there was some discussion whether it was suitable if the national Lucia was from a different ethnic group, but it was decided that ethnicity should not be a problem, and in the year 2000 an adopted non-white girl was crowned the national Lucia.
Although St. Lucia's Day is not an official holiday in Sweden, it is a popular occasion in Sweden. The Lucia evening and night is a notoriously noisy time. High school students often celebrate by partying all through the night. At many universities, students hold big formal dinner parties since this is the last chance to celebrate together before most students go home to their families for Christmas.
The Swedish lyrics to the Neapolitan song Santa Lucia have traditionally been either Natten går tunga fjät (The Night walks with heavy steps) or Sankta Lucia, ljusklara hägring (Saint Lucy, Bright Illusion). There is also a modern version with easier text for children: Ute är mörkt och kallt (Outside it's dark and cold).