St. Lucy's feast day approaches - should we have Anne wear a crown of lit candles?! #CouldBeDangerous...

Happy Thursday everyone, and I hope that you are well. :) I absolutely love the feast days during Advent, and a fairly new one to my radar screen is coming up on Saturday December, 13th: the feast of St. Lucy. I thought we could talk about St. Lucy a bit and plot about how to work her feast day into a fun family activity/ domestic monastery thing. :)

Henry is the one who really drew my attention to St. Lucy. He and I read a saint story of some sort each night before bed (we have an entire library of books to pull from). And during the course of these readings last year, St. Lucy made an appearance. What with all of the dramatic eye gougings and blazing fires, the story captured Henry's imagination.

"Wow. Did that really happen to her, Mommy? How was she able to do that?"

*very big eyes*

Since then, he's always been fond of St. Lucy. Last year, I bought the book that you see above, Lucia: Saint of Light to read to the kids on her feast day. Henry read it, but Anne wasn't too interested in longer stories just yet. Plus, it really is written for slightly older children, I would say the 7-8 year range. But the pictures are intriguing, so we'll see how it goes this year.

I'd like to make St. Lucy's feast an annual celebration in our house. Thus, I decided to do some additional research this year. Who exactly was St. Lucy, you ask? Lucy was an early virgin martyr (there's that word again! :0 I always substitute "unmarried" when reading these stories to the kids ;-)) who actually appears in the canon of the Mass in Eucharistic Prayer I. Hence, the Church obviously finds her a pretty important example of courage in faith. Part of her story involves Lucy convincing her mother to seek the intercession of St. Agatha for the cure to a bleeding problem she was experiencing. The two women traveled to St. Agatha's tomb, and while there, Lucy had a vision of Agatha and her mother was cured. Subsequently, Lucy took a vow of virginity and gave her money and belongings away to the poor. When she rebuffed a smarmy suitor wanting to marry her, she was targeted as being a Christian, tried, convicted, and martyred. Unfortunately, we have the torture sequence referenced above. :-\

Traditional activities on the feast of St. Lucy involve the youngest daughter in the family wearing a crown (symbolizing martyrdom, and Lucy's status as a bride of Christ, I'm thinking) of lit candles. Her name means "light," so that's part of it, but it may also have to do with her feast falling during Advent, when we expectantly await the light of Christ. This is all very lovely, but obviously a trifle dangerous.  Especially considering our contender for the crown:

I'm not thinking this is a good idea. :0 I may try to find some crafty materials around the house to make a ribbony crown for her, we'll see. But no candles, please. The other thing that is popular on the feast of St. Lucy is serving coffee and sweet rolls that morning. I have no idea what this has to do with young Lucy herself, but this is the custom. I found a recipe here for an appropriate sweet bread for those brave souls wanting to bake. I absolutely love the idea of placing lit candles on the bread, perfect and symbolic compromise! I was all gung ho, but then I saw "active, dry yeast" on the list of ingredients. I have no notion of how one acquires yeast at all, let alone yeast that is all active :0 so I'm not sure if we'll be doing this or not. Maybe I could stop at the grocery store on my way home for some pre-baked "St. Lucy bread." Or at least, that's what I'll call it. ;-)

But I'd like to make the day notable for the kids. There are some other great St. Lucy day ideas over at this blog, if you feel ambitious.

How about you, dear reader? Doing anything special for the feast of St. Lucy?

Advent feast days: adding in some new traditions this year...

Hello all! Tomorrow is the feast of St. Nicholas, and so I thought I'd commandeer the opportunity to talk about some new things I'm doing this Advent. Related to this endeavor, I will soon be reviewing the first in a series of books about the liturgical year, which focuses on the Advent & Christmas seasons. That post will be up on Tuesday December 17th, so keep an eye out for it! There will also be a giveaway opportunity for the book in question! There are additional volumes that I will review as well, the second of which covers Epiphany and Lent. So excited!!

Ok anyway, I get all crazy when I talk about the liturgical year, because it's just one of my favorite topics. So where was I? Right! The feast of St. Nicholas. It's tomorrow, and this year we will be celebrating it with the kids.

St. Nicholas, of course, is where our Santa Claus tradition originally comes from, and as I emphasized to Henry when we broke the news last year that Santa Claus isn't real, St. Nicholas very much *was* a real person, a bishop. Known for his generosity, the other major story attached to him is in regards to him dropping off 3 bags of gold coins at the home of a man who was contemplating *selling off his 3 daughters* to make do. Good gracious.

We're going to have the kids leave their shoes out by the fireplace, and I bought little bags of chocolate gold coins to place in them. Henry and I will also read St. Nicholas's story in his saint book.

This is a great book, by the way. The stories are written for children' Henry's age (intermediate readers, age 8), and have lots of details that will capture their attention. I bought him the first volume, which begins with the January feasts, through June, to put in his stocking.

Ok, back to St. Nick. I'm also going to put out a small book for each child, as a gift. Yesterday, at Catholic All Year, Kendra drew my attention to a few Advent books for children, one of which concerns St. Nicholas:

The Miracle of St. Nicholas

Although it won't arrive in time for the feast day, I currently have this in my Amazon shopping cart. This Prime shipping speed is turning me into a salivating book hoarder. It will come by Monday, and I will enjoy reading it with Anne leading up to Christmas. I may have also added a wood St. Nicholas doll to my shopping cart. I'm admitting nothing.

Next Friday, December 13th, is the feast of St. Lucy, who is a favorite of Hank's. I think it's the plate of eyes that she's carrying in her hand. :0

While I was adding the St. Nicholas book to my cart (*innocent look*) Amazon "recommended" to me the following:

Lucia, Saint of Light

 

Even though Hank already reads chapter books, and this seems targeted to kids a few years younger than him, I actually think he will love this book. The reviews noted that it's for school aged kids, definitely too difficult for toddlers and preschoolers to understand, and when I mentioned a St. Lucy book to Hank last night, he gasped in joy. He loves her. This is also in my cart. *shifty look*

 

The tradition on the feast of St. Lucy, in Hank's words (since we have read her story in his various saint books at least a dozen times):

 

"So, the youngest daughter, that's Anne, right? She should wake us up on that day wearing a crown of lit candles. Carrying coffee and special sweet rolls."

 

Yeeeaahhhhh. So, we're not going to be following the St. Lucy tradition to the letter. Or, at least until we can trust Anne not to start a fire. But I'd like to look into baking some special rolls for that morning. 

Oh. And while I was shopping, Amazon had to go and recommend this:

The Legend of the Pointsettia

 

I mean, do they have no shame? I see that the book is about a little Mexican girl's devotion to the Christ Child, and references Our Lady of Guadalupe, feast day of December 12th!!!! 

 

Right, it's in my cart. I'm planning to checkout before I leave work. :0

 

I'm very excited about what we have planned from now until Christmas. We have done family Advent activities for many years, but this year I am really feeling the *Advent* message, rather than focusing on Christmas long before that actual celebration. And I've been very annoying about telling other people about Advent too, and how fabulous it is, and how they should get in on a piece of the action.

 

It's Advent fever I'm telling you! :)