SVEA 253 has had a very eventful festive season! On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, lodge Cultural Leaders Hannah Lindgren and Billie King, along with 2023 Lucia Gretchen Schaller, made a TV appearance on Indy Now! to promote this year's Luciafest. The hosts loved learning about Swedish holiday traditions, and they enjoyed the glögg and Lussekatter buns! Thank you to Brenda Myers for providing them. You can watch the segment here: https://fox59.com/video/learn-about-st-lucia-day-with-the-scandinavians-of-indianapolis-112724/10253757/
On December 8, 2024 we hosted over 200 people for our annual Luciafest, this time a new venue: the Basile Theatre at the Historic Athenaeum! It is a gorgeous, historic venue with a rich cultural heritage in our community. We are grateful they partnered with us for our event. We enjoyed a light meal of traditional Swedish Julbord food catered by Cloud Nine Cuisine while enjoying music from Skandilocity and perusing the amazing set of raffle baskets available this year!
This year's program was emceed by Jon Strand, who started off the program reflecting on the 110+ years of our lodge's history in Indianapolis and how proud those founders would be to see over 200 people gathered to celebrate the tradition of Lucia. Chairperson Glenn Carlstrand shared a little about what the lodge accomplished this year and our goals for the year ahead. Then we kicked off the main program! This year's beautiful Lucia was Grace Spencer. The kids did a lovely job of singing the songs after working so hard to learn them this year at Children's Club! The music by Skandilocity and the SVEA Singers was so lovely in the acoustics of this venue.
After the main program, we picked raffle basket winners, presented our Lucia with her pendant, danced, listened to story time and had a visit from Jultomte!
Thank you to everyone who came out to the new venue this year to enjoy a beautiful Luciafest together! God Jul!
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