The Santa Lucia competition highlights church tradition from Sweden
When Hope Covenant Church in Orland Park hosts its annual Santa Lucia Pageant on Saturday, it will continue a local tradition that has evolved since the last century.
Helping orchestrate the event is a “family of women who have gone back literally decades and decades back to the old church,” said the Rev. Jon Fogel, adding that Hope Covenant was founded 27 years ago from a Lockport church that was 120 years old old.
He’s talking about Charlotte Hampton and her daughter, Rachel.
“They’ve been doing this for at least 30 years,” he said. Although the pair have worked together for years, Rachel Hampton, who is also Hope Covenant’s Sunday Shoe Coordinator, has now taken over teaching the young participants how to balance lighted candles on their heads.
“We’ve never had an accident because they’re so good at giving them instructions,” he said. “They are the ones who light the candles when they go out and grab the candles at the end.”
The Santa Lucia competition is a Christian holiday and festival of lights that has its roots in Sweden.
“She (Santa Lucia) is the queen of light. It is the idea that even in the darkest of times, light can still shine… Darkness cannot overcome darkness. Only light can do that,” Fogel said, adding that it is inspired by a passage in the Gospel of John: “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.”
The Santa Lucia Queen wears a garland of lighted candles on her head and walks through the room carrying a tray with a coffee pot, and she is based on an Italian saint, Lucia of Syracuse. “I don’t know why the Swedes adopted her,” Fogel said. “She walked through the catacombs of Rome, carrying food to the hidden Christians. She couldn’t carry the food and candles so she carried them on her head.”
Rachel, a second-generation Santa Lucia queen who served in that role three years ago when she was 18, “is our only Lucia queen that I know of who sang when she left,” he said. “We can’t get these girls to sing in Swedish when they walk with lit candles on their heads and holding hot coffee.”
Rachel said she has been involved in the pageant “for as long as I can remember. My mom used to do it when she was younger when we were at the Lockport church, and over the years it morphed into what it is now.”
She is depicted in family photos from previous pageants, wearing little white dresses and star crowns. She had always dreamed of becoming the queen.
“You don’t get to be queen until your junior or senior year in high school. I worked my way up where you’re an attendant for years serving the guests,” she said. “I was a senior and was in choir and stuff, so I sang the Lucia song in Swedish when I went down.”
Her mother helped the girls in the pageant, and when Rachel became a student, she took over those duties.
Teaching the young contestants how to walk down the aisle without dropping the chandelier “is probably one of the scarier parts,” she said.
“It helps to be experienced and have that background and keep your head on straight,” Rachel said.
“They don’t need a lot of training. They come early in the day or to find where they stand and where they sit. Mostly I thought it would be helpful because I know what it’s been like before and I know what it’s like and how it feels to have some wax dripping on your head when you go down.”
This year’s queen is Nadia Ghouleh, a student at Sandburg High School in Orland Park. The key to a successful government? Make sure “the crown fits and it’s all about going slow,” Rachel said.
In addition to the queen, the pageant, which is more of a procession than a play, features children from as young as 3 to 18. The youngest girls dress up as angels, carrying battery-lit candles, and the youngest boys become Swedish elves, with middle and high school boys who dress like star boys, Fogel explained. “They wear these ridiculous hats that are 2 feet tall. They look like duffle hats and they carry little wands.”
High school girls act as attendants and carry individual candles. “They have a much bigger job than the competition. They’re also the wait staff,” he says.
The program, which includes Christmas carols, the story of Lucia and Swedish folk music performed on traditional instruments by the Scandinavian Folk Group Chicago Spelmanslag, is followed by a traditional Swedish brunch.
Doors open at 9 a.m. Saturday and the program begins at 10 a.m. at the church, 14401 W. End Ave. in Orlando Park. Donations will be accepted to cover costs, but a reservation is required and can be made on www.orlandhope.org/lucia or by emailing [email protected].
“You end with the procession,” Fogel said. “The queen says ‘Let us eat,’ and they process and attendants run out and take baskets of food.”
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The brunch will feature pastries from a Swedish bakery on Chicago’s North Side and some homemade items as well. On the menu are rye bread, cardamom coffee, pickled herring, cottage cheese (cheese), rice porridge and sausage, a potato sausage made with special equipment.
“Every Covenant church older than 25 to 50 years that hosts a Lucia has one of these. It’s an over 100-year-old hand grinder for potato sausages,” Fogel said with a laugh. “You have to take it apart and clean it. I think it’s in a box and you have to know what to do to put it together.”
Hope Covenant is just one of many churches founded by immigrant groups from Sweden. “They wanted to be united around a shared mission, not a shared belief,” he said.
“Our church started speaking Swedish during the first decades of its history. Today, the (Evangelical Union Church) is incredibly diverse. …. Some have Swedish roots, but not as many as you think. There are so many who are adopted into the Swedish culture. They have adopted Lucia and made her their own.”
Fogel emphasized that the Santa Lucia program is open to everyone.
“We are a community-centered church. Everyone, regardless of whether they are Swedish, Christian, or none of the above, is invited to experience a Christian tradition that is unique,” he said.
Melinda Moore is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.