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For nearly 400 years, the people of Sweden have celebrated the Santa Lucia Festival on December 13th. According to the old Swedish calendar, the 13th was the longest night of the year, and legend holds that during a famine, a white-clad St. Lucia — the lady of light — appeared on a Swedish lake bringing food and ushering in warmer and brighter days. In Bemidji, locals of Swedish descent keep the Santa Lucia tradition alive with an annual celebration said to be one of the largest of its kind in the U.S.

IT'S 5:30 A.M. ABOUT 400 PEOPLE mill about outside a banquet hall in Bemidji, sipping hot apple cider and traditional Swedish Glugg, a mulled wine mixed with almonds and raisins.

Celebrants: It's supposed to be 20 degress below, though, when we drink this ... I don't know, it's pretty pleasant the way it is... Oh, it is, huh... It really warms the tummy on a cold morning.

O'Boyle: It's so nice that people have accepted a tradition without wanting to change it or do anything. I don't know, maybe we're more traditional than in Sweden. But this is how it's been done for several centuries.

O'Boyle: Well, Lucia, she lived in the year, around 300. She was a Sicilian girl and she was betrothed to a Roman soldier. But she was Christian and he would have none of that. She would not renounce her Christianity. So as a punishment, they poked her eyes out. She was blind.

Lundorf: Well, for a lot of people, it's the way to start the Christmas season, and that's the way I looked at it when I first started coming to the festival about 18 years ago. It's just a good way to start the season. You leave here that morning and you feel warm, and you feel rich in tradition and it's a good warm feeling.

O'Boyle: When everyone is seated, the lights go out all over, and in comes Lucia, and she's dressed in (a) white dress with a red sash and a crown of live candles in her hair. And she's followed by attendants, also in white, but they have tinsel crowns and tinsel around their waists, and they all carry a candle, and it's pitch dark. It's very beautiful.

Celebrants: And so on this dark day, she brings the light to all of us, and for us now, it's a great entry into the Christmas holiday season ... It's an incredible event. And not the least of the least of the incredible parts of it is that this many people get up this early in the morning to do this. I think it's kind of a joyous remembrance of our heritage, of our ethnic heritage. Maybe of the things, whatever it was, that brought my grandparents to this country from Sweden. I think it's popular because people want to hang on to some of those traditions that may be lost in the world of high technology.