Lucia - The Saint with beautiful eyes.
Before the Gregorian calendar, also known as the "Everlasting" calendar, came into use, St. Lucia's Day actually fell on the shortest day of the year. It was the most significant day amongst the witches' days and according to people's beliefs at that time, it was the day when all the bad powers reached their climax. This was in fact because it was the day of the year when the night dominated the daylight.
It is interesting to note that the name Lucia has had many different legends associated to it, some bad, some good. One such legend told that Lucia was in fact a Saint who had beautiful eyes. The legend said that one young man was so charmed by her eyes that she took them out, to avoid leading him into temptation. This is why that in some European countries St. Lucia has become the patron saint of light, as well as the curer of eye diseases. Other legends, however, say that Lucia was the greatest of all the witches, and one who couldn't even be burnt at the stake. This may be why Lucia was not a very popular girl's name in Slovakia at the time.
Even though the many traditions from this period began to be attached to other dates of the year after the calendar was reformed, the Lucia traditions were preserved and came to life every year on the 13th December. On this day, the main focus of attention was on the means of protection over evil powers, quite often this would be through the power of light.
In the region of Orava, people protected themselves against witches and evil powers with garlic. As well as eating the garlic, they would also use it to form the sign of the cross on people's foreheads as well as on the doors of the house. The stable doors would also be blessed in this way, and garlic would sometimes even be fed to the cows. This was in case witches would come on the night of St. Lucia and cast a spell on the cows, making them stop producing milk.
The garlic that was fed to the cows would have both the ends cut off. This was in case the witch would come to the stables, smell the garlic, and cry out:
"Garlic, come out of the cow!"
Now the garlic could answer:
"How can I come out if I don't have a head or a tail?"
Another of the practices popular in the Orava region was to make a lot of loud noise to scare away the evil powers. The shepherds would go around the village and blow loudly on a big trumpet. Their journey would end at a crossroads, the place where the witches would supposedly meet on St. Lucia's Day. Even the young men of the village would help get rid of the evil spirits by cracking their whips loudly, ringing bells and by trying to make as loud a noise as possible.
The greatest desire for everyone on St. Lucia's Day was to actually discover a witch. It was believed that you could look through the keyhole of the village church, at midnight on St. Lucia's Day, and see all the witches in the village. Another way to identify witches was by building a "St. Lucia Stool". The stool was made entirely of wood without using a single nail, and the man who made it was then supposed to sit on it in church during mass, and was thus able to see all of the village witches.
Each type of witch had different characteristics, so the man on the "St. Lucia Stool" could identify them. Those witches that would supposedly take the milk from cows would be carrying a vessel for milking. Others would carry shovels or spindles, etc. The man who was sitting on the stool in church would have to quickly return home having spotted a witch, else the witches would catch him.
St. Lucia's was also a day for many different prophecies. People would place a cherry branch in water on this day, and then if the branch should blossom before Christmas Eve, it would mean that the person would definitely live until the next Christmas.
Those girls that wanted to know who would be their future husband, would bite from an apple every day from St. Lucia until Christmas Eve. If the apple started to rot it would be the sign that the girl would not marry. The last bite would be taken on Christmas Eve, and when the girl went to church that evening, the boy who talked to her first would supposedly become her husband.
A similar ritual would be where the girls would write 13 notes on St. Lucia's Day, 12 of them with names of boys in the village and one that was blank. Everyday, the girl would burn one of the notes, with the one before last being burnt on the morning of Christmas Eve. The girl would then open the note that was left, and on it would be the name of her future husband. If the note was empty it meant that she would not marry at all.