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is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.
--Motto of the Christopher Society
A thousand years ago King Canute (also known as Knud in Denmark and Knut in Norway) declared that Christmas would last a month, from December 13, the feast of St. Lucia, until January 13, or Tjugondag Knut (St. Canute's Day). No one is quite sure why Lucia, a 4th century Sicilian saint, came to be so revered in Sweden. Some say she once visited the country, and others believe that Christian missionary stories of her life entranced the Swedish people. Whatever the origin, these new Christians who converted to Christianity around 1000 acquired a special fondness for the saint whose feast day marked the return of the sun and whose name itself means "light."

Although Santa Lucia Day, in its modern incarnation--both sacred and secular, has only been celebrated on a national scale in Sweden since the 1920s, today's celebration can be traced through Swedish history and medieval custom to the 4th century martyrdom of a Sicilian virgin named Lucia.