Last week, my family and I went to the St. Lucia services at Ebenezer Lutheran Church in Andersonville. We’ve meant to go for several years but, since a friend’s sons were participating, we had the perfect excuse.

St. Lucia Day, we learned, is a huge deal in Sweden. It celebrates Lucia, a 5th century martyr and saint, who, according to legend, brough food to Christians hiding in Roman catacombs, lighting her way with a wreath of candles on her head. The service included attendees singing Swedish hymns and carols, two choirs, some Swedish folk dancing, and a procession of this years St. Lucia, wearing a wreath of candles on her head, with her attendants, carrying their candles in their hands.

Ultimately, this is a festival of light, held on what, in the Julian calendar, would have been the darkest day of the year. And it’s an appropriate marker of the Christmas season. Jesus is, after all, the Light. He leads us out of darkness and allows us to see.

Darkness has been particularly salient since we moved to Chicago. My city sits almost on the eastern edge of the Central time zone. That means that today, the winter solstice, the sun set at 4:23. It’s not the earliest place to get dark, of course, but that is pretty early. If I were still in New York, the sun would have set 9 minutes later. Where I grew up, tonight’s sunset will be at 4:45. And for those of you in Salt Lake, the sun doesn’t go down until 5:03. And while it’s never entirely dark in my city, the setting sun makes it harder to see and, as a massive cold front approaches, harder to stay warm.