St Lucy's Day by Sheena Wilkinson

My December ABBA post always falls on St Lucy’s Day, a day to think about light in the darkness. St Lucy (Lucia) is claimed as a patron saint for all sorts of disparate groups, from the blind, to cutlers, to those suffering from throat infections or dysentery. The legends and traditions which have grown up around her, like many of our winter festivities, are a mixture of Christian and older Pagan rituals.  Many other religions also have festivals of light, this year’s Hannukah encompassing St Lucy’s Day. In the Julian calendar her feast day roughly coincided with the winter solstice, hence Donne’s assertion that ‘’Tis the year’s midnight, and it is the day’s’.

 

One thing is sure, whichever calendar you use, and whatever your beliefs and background, this is a dark time of what has been a dark year. No wonder we need to celebrate light, especially when, in Donne’s words, ‘The world's whole sap is sunk’.  

 

Many of my writer friends, including myself, are feeling very much as though our sap is sunk. We are exhausted, or struggling to find motivation or inspiration. We are worried about not getting publishing contracts, or about making a living with dwindling or no advances. We put all our energies into books which may or may not do well.  In December we try not to hope that our books will be included in seasonal round-ups of people’s favourite reads of the year. While pretending that we don’t mind a bit. 

 

And under all of this, there is the guilt. The world is suffering so much. Our fellow humans are suffering so much. What right have I to worry that I mightn’t get a contract for the book I’m writing? What does it really matter if I didn’t make that prize list, or that round-up? Sure, it matters to my pride and sense of self, and my earning capacity, but I won’t starve, or lose my home and country. And at the end of the day, it’s only stories. I’m not saving people’s lives, or fighting for justice. 

 

But people need stories. People need entertainment. And no, we mustn’t look away from suffering. But sometimes, in order to have the wherewithal to help others – those close and those further away – humans need to be distracted for a while. And authors provide that distraction. When people tell me they read my latest book on holiday, or recovering from Covid, or that it helped cheer them up or get them out of a reading rut, that makes me happy. 

 

Books and stories have always lit up my life, and never more so than now. So let us, this St Lucy’s Day, remember that we have all given light with our stories. 

And that list of people that St Lucy is patron saint of? It includes writers.