Anderson crowned Santa Lucia queen

STANTON — The Stanton community’s 59th annual Santa Lucia program concluded Saturday evening with the crowning of Alexa Leigh Anderson, Stanton High School senior, as the newly reigning queen.

Attending Santa Lucia Queen Alexa were six other young women, five from the senior class and one, a junior, and the traditional “Christmas Dolls” and “Jul Tomtes”.  
Lauren Burke, the 2009 Santa Lucia queen, crowned Alexa Anderson during the ceremony Saturday evening. Twelve former queens watched from their nearby chairs.
The community has selected Santa Lucia’s queen and her court each December since 1952.
The solemn, candle-lit pageantry of the Santa Lucia festivities is the focus of the community’s December gathering, but the evening’s other program events have respectfully become less solemn.
Volunteers prepare a theme each year so that all traditional essentials are included in the family friendly celebration. Again, Saturday night, the mayor’s welcome, a light-hearted skit, a Swedish men’s chorus, musical and folk dance performances by elementary students, the recognition of visiting former Santa Lucia Queens and the singing of a couple Christmas hymns were part of the program preceding the coronation.  
This local, annual Santa Lucia observance began nearly 60 years ago to help pass traditions of the Swedish immigrants who homesteaded in Stanton’s Halland Settlement founded by Reverend Bengt Magnus Halland.
Santa Lucia queen candidates commemorate the life of a young maiden, Lucia, whose conversion to Christianity brought her in conflict with the pagan Roman society 1700 years ago. Lucia expressed her faith with charity, so Stanton’s young women met early to spend the day doing kind deeds for others.
Prior to meeting with sponsors, candidates must have carried on the tradition of rising in the morning’s darkness to prepare and serve family members breakfast. In Sweden, traditionally a family’s oldest unmarried daughter does this on the first day when the winter’s darkness shortens.
Stanton retells its understanding of “St. Lucia”, Santa Lucia, with candles and symbolic tokens on the second Saturday of December because it is closest to the winter’s day of increased sunlight.    
While the young women were braving Saturday’s increasingly blustery winds to care for others, community cast votes at Stanton’s Senior Center and lingered over coffee and refreshments.
While sequestered in a classroom waiting for the ceremonies to begin, the townspeople were entertained by participants in “The Dating Game Comes to Stanton” skit, written by Sharmyn Brockshus, Stephanie Burke and Leanne Johnson and several musical selections.
Jeff Sandin, the game show host, introduced the “still single” Nicole Hallquist, 2001 Santa Lucia queen. The skit had Hallquist cast to find her ideal match among the three “hidden” and supposedly eligible bachelors she interviewed.
“Bachelor” cast members were Ryan Hart, and the more senior “bachelors” farmer Bruce Nelson and deer hunter Jerry Sandin. Hallquist asked the bachelors to describe activities they would include in a romantic date and what kind of meal each would prepare for an evening together.
Though the answers were entertaining, even the audience knew Hallquist had only one good choice.
Of course, a technicality disqualified Hart. Since all of Jerry Sandin’s entertaining answers indicated he would be an unsatisfactory match for the young Hallquist, she reluctantly selected Bruce Nelson. To her relief, when the enthusiastic Nelson sought permission from his wife, Marla, she ordered her husband off the stage.
Marla Nelson’s primary program responsibilities included overseeing the fifth and sixth graders as costumed traditional Swedish folk dancers, reminiscent of those settled the community, and the always well-rehearsed sacred and secular Christmas songs performed by the elementary students.
Louise Hart skillfully accompanied the evening’s singers, including Barb Nelson’s tribute to the newly selected queen.
The mostly red-vested men’s chorus sang “Skonja Maj” and the community joined in a verse of both “Joy to the World” and “O, Come, All Ye Faithful” prior to the ceremonial crowning of the Santa Lucia Queen.
An abbreviated recapping of Santa Lucia’s life forms the basis of the coronation ceremony. Narrators Nicole and Kevin Hallquist told of Lucia’s conversion to Christianity after the miraculous healing of her mother. However, practicing her faith made her an outcast in the pagan Roman society and, after caring for fellow Christians in the catacombs, Lucia became an early Christian martyr.
The red sash around the white robes worn by the candidates served as reminders of the blood shed as Lucia forfeited her life to remain faithful to her Savior.
Also selected for the court this year were Amanda Osher, Paige Peterson, Kadie Subbert, Molly Haley, Shelby Wagg and Samantha Sederburg.
The other 2010 Santa Lucia brides busily caring for others during the day were Cassie Bruce, Emily Dittmer, Blake Kirchert, Jessie Snow, Dakkota Druivenga, Crystal Mackey, Julia Pfeiffer, Dana Stephens and Cheyenne Thomas.
Freshman and sophomore girls solemnly lit the pathway for the candidates and Bryce Allen and John Mainquist assisted the young women of the court to the platform.  
Young children ceremonially skipping their way down the aisle or bearing the crown and necklace for the queen were Carter Johnson, John Peterson, Allie Sandin and Nicole Vorhies.
The weather on Saturday evening mixed low temperatures, high winds and blowing snow, but Stanton kept its tradition of never having postponed a Santa Lucia festival.