A very long time ago, in a town called Syracuse, on the seashore of Sicily, there lived a girl named Lucy. Her name came from an old word, lux, which means light. It was a good name for someone born in a land of sunshine, but Lucy would find out that some lights burn inside a person, and those the wind cannot blow out. Her family was rich: a big house, servants, and chests of treasure at the back. Her father died when she was small, and Lucy stayed at home with her mother, Eutychia.

Eutychia had been ill for years with a sickness no doctor could cure. One day Lucy had an idea, and she invited her mother on a short journey to Catania, a town nearby, where the tomb of Saint Agatha was. The two of them went together, prayed for a long while, and came home slowly along the road. Tradition tells that on the way back, Eutychia realised she was well again.

That was when Lucy asked her mother for something.

— If God has given us this joy, let us share what we have.

Eutychia said yes. And little by little, the chests at the back of the house grew empty: coins, blankets, cooking pots, fine dresses. All of it went into the hands of the hungry people of Syracuse, and the door of that house stood open all day.

In those days the emperor in Rome was called Diocletian, and he had given orders to arrest Christians everywhere. But the nearer danger was closer to home. Lucy's family had arranged for her to marry a young man, and that young man counted the treasure chests with his eyes. When he heard the fortune was going to the poor, he grew angry, went to Paschasius, the governor of Sicily, and told him that Lucy was a Christian.

Lucy was brought before the governor. First he spoke kindly and promised her things; then he spoke harshly and threatened her. She gave the same answer every time, in a calm voice: she belonged to Jesus, and she would go on belonging to him. Neither promises nor threats could change that answer.

Lucy died that day, in the year 304, still very young, without denying what she believed. The Christians of Syracuse buried her carefully and never forgot her name. About a hundred years later, on a stone down in the tunnels under the city, someone had already written "the feast day of my lady Lucy," the way you write about a day everyone knows.

That feast day settled on the thirteenth of December. On the old calendar it fell near the longest night of the year up in the north of Europe: the sun went down early, snow covered the roads, and people waited for Christmas in the dark. That is how Lucy became the saint of candles. In Sweden and Norway, even now, a girl dresses in white, sets a crown of small lit candles on her head, and walks out early carrying warm saffron buns to her whole family.

In Brazil, many people pray to Santa Luzia and ask her to watch over their eyes. Perhaps it is because of her name, since light is exactly what eyes are looking for. There are towns named after her, churches named after her, and people who light a white candle in the window on the thirteenth of December.

Advent is that time of waiting: four weeks of long nights before Christmas, with one more candle lit on every Sunday. Lucy walks ahead through that time, like someone opening a path in the dark so that others can follow. And when the last candle is lit, Jesus will already have been born.