It’s almost St. Lucy day! This is a day that is traditionally celebrated in Sweden. Little girls dress up as St. Lucy in white dresses with red ribbons (that symbolize her purity and her martyrdom) and wreaths with candles in their hair. They serve Santa Lucia saffron buns, a sweet bread, also known “Lussekatter”. Also in Sweden, there was a tradition there where boys dressed up as “star boys” in pointy hats with stars and robes and sang on the epiphany. Somewhere along the line in Sweden, these 2 traditions got smushed together into one big Santa Lucia day celebration! You can find all of my resources for celebrating the feast day of St. Lucy here.
This year, we are continuing on making our Advent Saint ornaments to incorporate celebrating the Saint feast days during Advent. These were my favorite ones to make so far! We did a lot of embellishing on these little guys, and the kids had a great time!
For optimal fun, eat leftover candy canes from St. Nicholas day while you color these. 😉
We embellished St. Lucy’s wreath around her head with green sequins. You could also use sparkly green pipe cleaners!
We also made 3D saffron buns to go on her plate. We took yellow model magic, rolled it into tiny snakes, and shaped them into the traditional “S” shape.
I piled these on the plate and let them dry. We stuck them on with glue dots.
I also used some gold glitter glue to give a little flash to her candle flames, and went around the edge of her plate with some glitter glue.
Some of the St. Lucys were printed in color and embellished, and some were printed in black and white and then colored. Look- we even tied actual little red ribbons around their waist! We had such a good time with these. 🙂
My girls all opted to make the St. Lucy ornament, and Julian made the star boy. (Surprise, surprise!) 😉 So far, the kids had the most fun with these! For embellishing the star boy, I provided a gold paint pen, and gold star-shaped sequins from the craft store.
As you can see in the picture, we are assembling our Advent Saint ornaments with glue dots (found in the scrapbooking section of any craft store) and I love these things! They’re like little sticky buggers. They adhere instantly! So it’s kinda like using hot glue, but with none of the burn risk.
This little star boy has been embellished with lots of gold glitter glue! I just love the different personalities each of these have. 🙂
We also have a star-shaped hole puncher, and we really had a good time with it! I couldn’t reach to punch holes in his hat, so we punched them along the bottom of his robes. Then I went around mine with a gold paint pen.
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With these holes punched out, these were just beautiful when we stuck a Christmas light inside!
Look how this guy glows when the lights are off.
Julian also punched some star holes in his.
Here’s our crew of star boys.
In the past, we have made real saffron buns, and I really enjoyed it. However, you all know I’m more of a crafter than a baker, so this year I went back to our canned cinnamon roll St. Lucy buns. What I’ve found is, I really like to buy the orange flavored cinnamon buns- they’re more similar in color than the originals, and I think it makes it a little more special.
We sprinkled some of our extra star sequins around on the table, decorated our Advent wreath with our St. Lucy and Star boy crafts, and enjoyed out canned orange cinnamon rolls for breakfast!
Get Your Advent Saint Download Now!
You can grab your whole pack of printable Advent Saint ornaments here and it included St. Lucy and the star boy.
These were a hit! If you’re looking for something a little easier for small hands, check out my ABC Saints set– L is for St. Lucy!
I would love to see how you’ve been embellishing your Advent Saint ornaments, so leave a link in the comments if you’ve been blogging about them! Or as always, feel free to share a picture on my facebook page. 🙂
More St. Lucy Feast Day Resources
I have a ton of resources and Swedish recipes, traditions, and even crafts for celebrating this Saint feast day, so find everything you need to celebrate St. Lucy day here!
With St. Lucy’s on a Saturday this year, we are taking the simplified St. Lucy’s buns to a new level–the whole family is hopping in the car and we are going to a doughnut shop! We are actually driving an hour to our nearest Krispy Kreme so the kids can watch the pastry assembly line, we will get science, sweetbreads, and a fun family adventure for our St. Lucy’s Day celebration! I can’t wait!
I LOVE Krispy Kreme! This is such a great idea. I really hardly think a doughnut is worth the calories unless it’s a Krispy Kreme. 😉
Hi Lucy…I know your sis in law, Kristin, via MOPs and she told me about your blog!! As I told Kristin, I am a closet Catholic although I am a member of First Bible Church Decatur. I have many Catholic friends! We love to visit the shrine in Hanceville, Alabama and we are watchers of EWTN and readers of Crisis Magazine. I know we are unusual in North Alabama!:) I read a blog by a Catholic mom that I really enjoy, By Sun and Candlelight. Dawn writes about life in her Catholic home and she also does crafts for liturgical seasons. I have added your blog to my bookmark and I hope you will visit me at Nanaland.
Yes, I have checked in on Dawn’s blog from time to time for years now. She does some really beautiful stuff! We actually just got back from visiting Kristen. All of these pictures were taken at her house! 🙂
I just realized I typed Lucy instead of Lacy! oops….my fingers do not always cooperate. I really enjoyed getting to know Kristen better yesterday. Love your blog and all your cute ideas.
I get that a lot, actually. Makes since- it’s a lot more common and a lot more Catholic. 🙂
Help! Maybe I’m the only dunce who doesn’t know, but who is Star Boy? Please? I need to know before tomorrow’s ornament rolls around & my kids ask! LOL
My kids LOVE this pack of saints! They’ve already asked if there are more for the rest of the year…we all hope you’ll have more to come! 🙂
All that I could find is in the top paragraph of this post. They are traditional to Sweden, and originated as an epiphany celebration, but somehow got lumped into St. Lucy’s day.
Hello,
I am a DRE at a parish and I bought your Advent Saints pack to give as a gift to the students to prepare for Christmas. As I was going through it I realize that most of our parents would have no clue who some of the saints are and how to explain it to their children. So I am putting together a packet that has saint bios. I am having trouble with Starboy. I am Vietnamese and grew up in a Catholic household that didn’t celebrate these kind of feast days. I have no clue who is starboy and can’t find anything really on him on the internet. Can you please explain?
Here is some information about Star Boy on this page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Lucy%27s_Day
You might also enjoy this page that briefly mentions them (but also includes a good video):
https://sweden.se/culture-traditions/lucia/