Annual Lucia celebration from Sweden

I was using the video to cheer up a family member's hospital visitors.
I notice Carl XVI Gustaf has criticised his own government's covid policy. With London and Sydney looking at new restrictions I think Enya's lonely and poignant Trains and Winter Rains would make a type of Carol-of-the-year...in a year when Kings and governments are unusually concerned about mortality the track's background Agnus Dei sounds very much like the Requiem mass chant(in considering the recent death of the main Boba Fett actor we might attribute his most famous line to the current powers-that-be:"he's worth more to me alive than dead")
The long standing traditional December 26 Sydney to Hobart yacht race has been cancelled due to covid restrictions from the Tasmanian government. Strange, considering that drowning deaths by participants are not unknown (apparently the worst year for deaths was in the 1990s- within recent memory). I'm almost reminded of the policy of Britain's current government to cease coal mining. Nobody would have exception to cleaner energy if that's what it is, but even the bitter struggle between the 80s Conservatives and the mining unions which couldn't do what today's emissions targets are doing (definitively closing coal mines) can't not but come to mind. At this very time a Dublin writer reflected : "the world is different. As we watch one film on television on Christmas Day the chances are that the video machine is working away recording a second one on another channel...I go (to my childhood) along a thread of memory and it is not a thread at all. I look closely and see it for what it is. My father's bootlace"(cf Christmas time machine, h.leonard)
[St Lucy pray for us]

The traditional folk group adds something special also. Seems to highlight the rural aspect even more this year.

Recently I was taking a closer look at The Virgin Mary ('of the Rose Garden') With Female Saints by the artist known as the Master of the St Lucy Legend (an old family Bible has a two-page spread reproduction).
Most of these were martyrs. The unobtrusive way that the instruments of their torture are included is remarkably clever- Catherine has the spiked wheel reproduced as a pattern in her silk or satin gown- likewise Barbara's tower; Agatha's and Apollonia's pincers are almost like Cindy-doll accessories,likewise Lucy's plate of eyes... gazing at these saints looking very much the ladies-in-waiting,did the Flemish devotees recall that we're dealing with victims of Christian genocide?- compare with Giambattista Tiepolo "Apparition of the Virgin to Dominican Saints" where Catherine of Siena's crown of thorns looks like it still hurts.

Weekend News reported that "A British grandfather has told how he feared he would be killed by a frenzied pack of otters which attacked him during an early morning run in Singapore....he was knocked over by the otters and could not get up as the pack set upon him".
It reminded one of David Attenborough's documentary of a few years ago- Wild City/ Singapore- which focused much on the return of an otter family to the harbour.
I'm glad numbers are now doing well,but the flipside is worth reflection also- like the glorious rose garden where St Lucy symbolically dwells now there's plenty of agony in the foundation.

It was quite less modernist stretches in the varied middle parts this year. The Lucia choirs were from music conservatory and school in nearby town Falun, good choice and overall a rather warming middleway hour with not any flaws at all noticed. The lake there is also a natural marvel to behold. 

Must check Tiepolo picturing St. Catherine! The other embellished silk-clad group sounds interesting too, striking contrast to the spiked wheel and the rest.

In relation to the otter incident my mind somehow jumped back brainy a very long while, when once visiting Simla of western region Himalayas, still in surprisingly vivid enchantment. In the recesses of somewhere... How one at that time "met" some of their numerous monkey inhabitants in and on and beside, and most about everywhere, along the Mall or main street. The monkeys were often watching around people on the walk itself, even though seldom close to actually disturbing the flow of strolling folks. Several times I have recalled and rejoiced to have saved some of those pictures inwards, also tending to be coming up again in a special way while reading from Kipling Plain Tales from the Hills (some stories actually set in this beautiful "summer capital" and, from a hundred years earlier, capturing an era like in snapshot).

Seems extra elegant this year. Flickering candles in the dark will always have some new angle of meaning as the years go by.

I think a lot of immigrants, probably most immigrants, are very happy to celebrate and respect the culture of the host countries.

The debate on immigration and multiculturalism can get very frustrating. Mostly because the left won't have it. But even the right, I think, sometimes simply ASSUME that newcomers are going to be hostile or indifferent to the host culture.

I wonder how it would be if, instead of always viewing immigrants as a danger to the culture, we tried to "recruit" them to it, include them in it. In America new immigrants have traditionally been very patriotic Americans, while also preserving their own heritage.

I was honouring St. Lucy in my own way yesterday-- by stuffing my face with Swedish meatballs and lots of other foods at the IKEA St. Lucy's Day party. With two Americans and a Filipina!