Santa Lucia
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Today, the feast day of Santa Lucia will be celebrated in Sweden, Norway and Denmark with candle-lit processions in schools, churches, hospitals, and homes for the elderly. Children, dressed in white gowns with crowns of dark green leaves, carry candles or lanterns and there are Lucia songs and, by tradition, sticky saffron buns.
Copenhagen has its own distinct celebration where canoes are decorated with coloured lights and some even have Christmas trees. The large flotilla ... more than 300 canoes took part last year ... forms up at Kalvebod, just below Langebro, and from there, just as it gets dark, they paddle up the harbour to Nyhavn and gather at the inner end to sing Christmas songs.
They return to the harbour and cross over to the Christianshavn canal where they stop to sing again at the bridge at Christianhavns Torv. It is then on to the south end of the canal and, crossing back over the harbour, they paddle along Frederiksholms Kanal, around Christiansborg, and finally, from Knippelsbro, it is back to the start for a total distance of seven kilometres with the whole thing stretching over three hours.
Large crowds gather on the quays and bridges along the route to watch and to join in with the singing and, for many, this is the event that marks the start of the Christmas season.
The Santa Lucia flotilla seems like a suitably dramatic event to mark the end of a year of posts here about how the citizens of Copennhagen use the streets and squares and the parks and harbours for an amazing range of exhibitions, cultural celebrations, sports events and festivals outside.
Since the middle ages, public spaces - squares, streets and the harbour and, from the 19th century, city parks and gardens - have been used for the staging of celebrations and religious festivals and parades in the city but, of course, with Coronavirus restrictions, events that can be held outside have become more important and even more popular.
