Our first St. Lucia's Day

Now that Rayna is 10, we decided she was ready to assume her responsibilities and we celebrated St. Lucia's Day for the first time this year.  Traditionally, the oldest girl in the family wakes up early to make breakfast for the rest of the family, and takes it up to them while they're still in bed.

(St. Lucia, who lived back around 300 A.D., reportedly brought food to Christian martyrs who were being punished.  She would sneak in while it was still dark, wearing candles on her head so she could see while still keeping her hands free to bring the food.)

For breakfast, most people have buns made with saffron.... but since I heard that saffron is an extremely expensive spice, I decided to modify the recipe.

And since I am not a super-morning person, at least not willing to get up 3 hours ahead of time to make a yeast bread which needs to rise twice, we decided to modify things even further.  :)

SO, Rayna and I made cinnamon rolls the afternoon before, putting them in the fridge to rise overnight.  Then the next morning they were baked up while Rayna donned a white gown with a red sash (the traditional outfit).  (Really the gown was one of Pete's t-shirts!)

When I had mentioned last week that I might want to observe this holiday this year, I told my mom I wasn't sure how to do the candles-on-the-head part.  She immediately whipped out one of her Christmas decorations, deconstructed it, and made it into a lighted head-dress!

So Rayna had lights on her head!

Then she carried the cinnamon rolls up to her brothers in bed (and served Pete, too, even though he had been up for hours by this point).

So the "holiday" -- which was really just breakfast in bed -- was a big hit here!  The boys ran around calling "Happy Cinnamon Roll Day," probably missing the point altogether.  But Rayna had a blast, too.... One of her all-time favorite things is making food and then serving it to people.  Our little St. Lucia!