{"id":28,"date":"2005-12-09T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-12-09T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2005\/12\/spiritual-decor-for-your-home.html"},"modified":"2005-12-09T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2005-12-09T12:00:00","slug":"spiritual-decor-for-your-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2005\/12\/spiritual-decor-for-your-home.html","title":{"rendered":"Spiritual Decor for Your Home"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div>\n<p>Each year on December 13th, Swedes celebrate the feast of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sweden.se\/templates\/cs\/Article____10431.aspx\" target=\"_new\">Santa Lucia<\/a>, a festival marked by candlelight (Lucia means light) at one of the darkest times of winter in this northern country. The day still finds young girls donning crowns of lit candles to represent the celebrated saint (a fire hazard waiting to happen, yes, but a nice tradition, at least in theory.)<\/p>\n<p>While I am not partial to the dangers of setting fire to my hair or spending hours in the mirror trying to remove candle wax drippings from the same, the feast of Santa Lucia has a special place in my heart, and I will celebrate it this year in my own way. My mother, an Italian woman named Concetta Lucia (with an Italian accent you pronounce Lucia <span style=\"font-style: italic\">loo-chee-a<\/span>&#8211;three syllables&#8211;as opposed to <span style=\"font-style: italic\">loo-sha <\/span>or <span style=\"font-style: italic\">loo-see-a<\/span>) liked this particular festival for obvious reasons: Lucia was her saint name.<\/p>\n<p>My Italian interpretation of the festival of Santa Lucia, minus the candlelit crown: This year on December 13th, I will find every candle in the house&#8211;all the tea lights, whatever I can find&#8211;spread them all throughout the rooms, and spend the evening eating, talking, and reading in this romantic glow, remembering my mother and her patron saint. An excuse for an entire evening by candlelight for religious ritualistic purposes is not to be missed.<\/p>\n<p>For more on Santa Lucia, see \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/12\/04\/style\/tmagazine\/t_h_2306_talk_patner_.html\" target=\"_new\">Queen for a Day<\/a>\u201d in last Sunday\u2019s New York Times.<\/p>\n<div style=\"clear:both;padding-bottom:0.25em\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Each year on December 13th, Swedes celebrate the feast of Santa Lucia, a festival marked by candlelight (Lucia means light) at one of the darkest times of winter in this northern country. The day still finds young girls donning crowns of lit candles to represent the celebrated saint (a fire hazard waiting to happen, yes,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":280,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Spiritual Decor for Your Home<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2005\/12\/spiritual-decor-for-your-home.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Spiritual Decor for Your Home\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Each year on December 13th, Swedes celebrate the feast of Santa Lucia, a festival marked by candlelight (Lucia means light) at one of the darkest times of winter in this northern country. The day still finds young girls donning crowns of lit candles to represent the celebrated saint (a fire hazard waiting to happen, yes,&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2005\/12\/spiritual-decor-for-your-home.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Idol Chatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-12-09T12:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"donna freitas\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Spiritual Decor for Your Home","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2005\/12\/spiritual-decor-for-your-home.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Spiritual Decor for Your Home","og_description":"Each year on December 13th, Swedes celebrate the feast of Santa Lucia, a festival marked by candlelight (Lucia means light) at one of the darkest times of winter in this northern country. The day still finds young girls donning crowns of lit candles to represent the celebrated saint (a fire hazard waiting to happen, yes,&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2005\/12\/spiritual-decor-for-your-home.html","og_site_name":"Idol Chatter","article_published_time":"2005-12-09T12:00:00+00:00","author":"donna freitas","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2005\/12\/spiritual-decor-for-your-home.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2005\/12\/spiritual-decor-for-your-home.html","name":"Spiritual Decor for Your Home","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website"},"datePublished":"2005-12-09T12:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2005-12-09T12:00:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/e688c4b50748e4bb0a29a384fc68aa64"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2005\/12\/spiritual-decor-for-your-home.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2005\/12\/spiritual-decor-for-your-home.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2005\/12\/spiritual-decor-for-your-home.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Spiritual Decor for Your Home"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/","name":"Idol Chatter","description":"Beliefnet Entertainment blog, TV blog, Movie blog, Religion in entertainment blog","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/e688c4b50748e4bb0a29a384fc68aa64","name":"donna freitas","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/3bb\/3bbee96f022df7191e7ff477ca6c7f09x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/3bb\/3bbee96f022df7191e7ff477ca6c7f09x96.jpg","caption":"donna freitas"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/author\/donna-freitas"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/280"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}