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There is St Lucy's Day (also known as Lucia) which is celebrated during December 13th.

However, the Saint Lucia hat is awarded for voting on December 15th.

Since there's no exact match, why is the hat called with this name?

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  • It's just a name. They could also call it "St. Paul", but since there was something close enough, they chose this as the name.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 14:52
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    If you will change the question to "Why the hat is called St. Lucia" I'll reopen, but as it stands you're asking about early awarding which is covered in the duplicate.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 14:55
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    There's no way this is a duplicate of those questions.
    – 3ventic
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 14:55
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    Fair enough, I've edited further but still think the answer is as simple as "because it's close enough".
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 15:00
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    Maybe the battle on 12/15 at St Lucia island? Not sure the importance though....
    – Kyle Kanos
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 15:09
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    The St. Lucia holiday celebrated in my country has the nice hat, and in Christmas time, it's obligatory to have that hat. However, winterbash began only after lucia, thus I think they had to put a new date on it. Though this is only my guess based upon the pretty hat and the fact of when winterbash began.
    – Gemtastic
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 15:24
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    @Kyle Kanos: That's an amazing find. It's my new favourite post hoc justification. ;-)
    – Jon Ericson
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 17:31
  • @Gemtastic: There have been "do something on day X" hats, where day X was before the official beginning of Winter Bash, on previous years.
    – Ilmari Karonen
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 18:24
  • @Ilmari Karonen: In the past, Winter Bash has started after Hanukkah, so we retroactively awarded hats for actions occurring earlier before the event. This year the calendars aligned so that that could be avoided. I didn't want my pet idea to ruin that lucky coincidence. ;-)
    – Jon Ericson
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 19:06

1 Answer 1

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13

I wanted to include the symbol of light overcoming darkness as the first hat that many people receive. I knew that Santa Lucia was officially celebrated on December 13, but I had to look it up. In my experience celebrations occur in the general timeframe of the solstice, so my note on the date was "close enough".

See also: Why is there a Saint Lucia hat on Mi Yodeya?

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3
  • The hat is great @jon-ericson. Thanks for including it and explaining the choice of date and meaning. I'm sorry to hear that there was some controversy.
    – Paul Ratazzi
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 17:14
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    @Paul Ratazzi: I'd chalk it up to "cultural misunderstanding" rather than controversy. Who knew that nine candles is a platonic ideal?
    – Jon Ericson
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 18:05
  • With that surname you should have known we Scandinavians would complain ;)
    – mplungjan
    Commented Dec 16, 2014 at 21:09

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