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Club Home Page How to join Dinner Schedule Club Activities Maps to Meetings Contact Us Club History Club Newsletters Columbus Pages Comments always welcome by email	Lucia Festival 2005 Lucia Sara Petman with club president Marilyn Flor Smith. 2005 Lucia Sara Petman, on stage with accompaniment. Mr. and Mrs. Claus enter with presents for children. Scandinavian club women in their traditional dress. Traditional dress at the 2005 Luciafest. Mr. and Mrs. Claus give children their presents. 2003 Lucia, Karin Nordstrom 1999 Lucia, Jill Marie Wickstrom Every December the Scandinavian Club of Columbus holds a Lucia Festival, with the Lucia bride leading a procession of children dressed in the traditional white robes, carrying candles through the darkness. Jill Marie Wickstrom served in the role of Lucia at the 1999 celebration. She is pictured here. Jill is the daughter of Rick and Teresa Wickstrom and granddaughter of Harry and Carol Wickstrom. She is a 14-year-old Freshman at Wyoming High School in suburban Cincinnati. She likes to play the piano and play soccer. In past years, Jill has helped at the Club's booth at the International Festival. She has studied at the Swedish language summer camp in Bemidji, Minnesota. It is a beautiful event that the children enjoy as much as the adults. After the procession the children serve the adults cookies, which draws on the tradition of children serving their parents small sweetbread cakes on the morning of December 13, Lucia dagen (the Lucia day). Lucia was actually an Italian saint, but her story had a special resonance with Scandinavians, who heard it from Italian missionaries who converted the northerners to Christianity. After the children complete the candle-light procession they gather together at the front of the room.They wait there while parents and others take pictures. Then they begin serving cookies to the members of the crowd. Click on this picture to see it full size, then use your browser's "back" button to return to this page. Scandinavian food cooked by Scandinavians. Each member of the Scandinavian Club of Columbus works on one dinner committee a year. The committee prepares the dinner for the rest of the club. This committee arrived to begin preparing the dinner, and found blue smoke coming from the building. Firefighters made sure it was safe, but the electricity was not restored for another hour and a half. The dinner committee managed to prepare, cook, and serve a dinner for 200 in two hours. Here dinner captain Inger Gilbert and committee member Terry Carlson take a break after the fact. Members often comment that they have an especially good time working together to prepare the dinner and that socializing under those conditions has its own unique charm. This commmittee had a heightened experienced. Ron and Norma Johnson look like they're having a good time helping enjoy the evening. Glenn Thornbloom makes sure that the real Santa Claus visits the Scandinavian Club every year to dance around the Christmas Tree with the children and give them presents. Perhaps Santa agrees to dance with the children because he's heard of Glenn's extensive dancing experience, but even more important is Glenn's success, year after year, in bringing Santa to the club. Alan Reid prepares to carry what appears to be enough glasses for everyone at his table. This earns him the special Åke Hellström award for a record number of glasses carried at one time. You won't find a picture of Åke Hellström anywhere on this site. That's because he's behind the camera in most of these pictures and the club is very grateful for his efforts, which make this site fun to view. 1998 Lucia, Katie King Here are some memories from the Lucia celebration for 1998. The event always attracts a large crowd and people are in an extremely festive mood. Lindsey Peterson gets some help from her cousin, Christine Grieshop, serving cookies to the adults. Mary Nordstrom chooses some cookies served to her by her daughter, Karin Nordstrom, and Karin's friend, Jenna Myers. Each child gets a chance to visit with Santa. Each sits on his lap and talks to him, then gets to open a present from Santa. It's an experience they talk about for a long time afterwards and this Santa, kids know, is "the real Santa," not the Santa's helpers they see everywhere. The Scandinavian Club of Columbus has celebrated the Lucia tradition for many years. Each year the children appear before the assembled adults when the candle-light procession has finished. It's a chance for the children to stand in front of a large group and for the adults to admire the young folks. Music for the Lucia celebration and for other evenings is provided by members who inherited it or learned it in the native country. Before dinner, beverages and snacks are part of the evening. Members gather and chat about their heritage, their daily lives, their favorite sports and whatever else interests them. This is also an opportunity for Scandinavian folks who are new to America to chat in their native language and to ask about American customs they don't understand. A good time is had by all. Members cook the dinners in the authentic traditional ways they learned at home. Everyone works on cooking one dinner each year. The cooking is a great time to enhance acquaintances and the cooking is fun. Of course, it also means that members can be served great food at all the rest of the dinners that year. Kids have fun getting together and always greet each other with a smile of recognition. They entertain themselves with their own conversation and with Scandinavian activities the adults provide for them.

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Last update 5/21/2006suomi416@yahoo.com
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