Cold St. Lucia's

I woke up to 10F.  I snapped the above picture when I cut through the park on my way to work this morning.  The light was really pretty, and I failed to capture it adequately.  The sky was a pale turquoise, and the clouds were peach set off by the blue light bouncing back from the snow.

As I write, it is 3F outside.  My snow boots are rated to 7F, which seemed slightly excessive when I bought them.  10F was OK (with boots, parka, and lots of wool), but I wouldn't have tried it if I hadn't had errands necessitating my walking a while anyways.  I don't think I'm going to attempt whatever gawd-awful temperature I wake up to tomorrow.  I like my toesies attached to my footsies.  This weather is such a shock because, until now, temperatures have been better than one would expect from this latitude.  Last night an arctic air-mass dropped in and tanked the temperature by 20 degrees F in a few hours.


St. Lucia's day after the jump!

Last night was also St. Lucia's day.  St. Lucia is a popular holiday in Sweden, where the eldest daughter brings her parents a breakfast in bed of special St. Lucia 'ess' shaped saffron rolls.  She does this wearing a white robe and a crown of candles.  Finland was ruled by Sweden for 600 years, and is still technically bilingual with Finnish and Swedish, though only 6% of Finns are native Swedish speakers, so it is reasonable to expect that St. Lucia's Day would be big in Finland.

They celebrate by crowning an official "St. Lucia" at the State Cathedral.  As far as I know, she's just some cute blonde chick.   I think it would be cleverer if the oldest Finnish woman were crowned as the "eldest daughter of Finland", but I guess that would be a different event.  Anyways, "St. Lucia" then leads a procession of other maids of Lucia from the Cathedral down to the Market Square on the harbor.  I attended this year's parade with my roommate.  It started to snow just as "St. Lucia" was being crowned, and there were lots of little blonde girls running around with electric candle-crowns, so I was glad to see it though the parade itself was not exactly impressive.  Also, the lights downtown are lovely.  I hope they remain after Christmas.

Another representation of St. Lucy, for comparison.