The Flat on Cabaniss Crescent

Dec. 13: The Feast of St. Lucy

We celebrated St. Lucy this past weekend.

I attempted to make Maggie a candle crown.  It did not work all that well, so next year I will save myself the headache and purchase this crown. I also would like to make her a beautiful white gown with a red sash to wear on this day next year. This year we had her wear a white dress with a pink sash. 

Maggie and I woke early and made this recipe for bread. It came out OK, but I will be searching for new recipes next year. 

She was so excited to put on the candle crown and deliver the bread to dad.  We have been talking about St. Lucy for months.

After she delivered the bread, I had a Lucy paper doll for her to play with.

Then I gave both kids a coloring sheet.

Here is Kerik's:

 

And here is Maggie's:

 

Finally, on her own, Maggie drew a picture of Lucy and narrated to me, "Once upon a time there was a girl named Lucy.  There was a lot of hot fire near her.  God came to save her.  Next to her is the cloud where heaven is.  Under the cloud is the place where the angels live."

Both kids eyes lit up Sunday in Mass when the priest mentioned the name of St. Lucy. 

I love making our faith come alive in their minds. 

The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe

December 12 is The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. To celebrate in our home, I made a simple Mexican dinner.  After dinner, Andy read the book The Lady of Guadalupe by Tomie dePaola. 

Then, we went to our favorite Mexican restaurant for dessert.  We go to this restaurant all the time, almost weekly, but we never have ordered dessert, so it felt extra special.  This restaurant has an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe and we made a point to show it to the kids. 

Next year, I would like to do some kind of craft or hands on activity with the kids.  Also, I think it would be nice to have a dozen pink roses as the centerpiece for our special feast. 

What did you do on this day?

Our Nativity Scene

Here is a picture of our Nativity scene (minus baby Jesus who we will add on Christmas Eve after Mass).  This year I am hoping to add the three wise men to our collection.

One tradition that we have been doing is to prepare the manager for baby Jesus with "good acts" of hay.  I saw a nice post written about this French Catholic tradition here.  One day I would like to have a larger manger to work with, but for now we just have our little one here.

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary

Monday was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary.  We let Kerik stay home from school to attend Mass. 

For dinner, my mother in law helped me to prepare a "White Feast."  We had white bean chicken chili with salad and corn bread with white wine.  For dessert we had peppermint ice cream in chocolate dessert shells. 

After dinner, I introduced a new custom to our family traditions: The Mary Candle.

I made this candle myself.  I bought a big white pillar candle at Walmart for $2.  The white candle represents Mary.  The beautiful white cloth (material I cut up from an old Japanese wedding kimono) represents her clothing covering her womb.  We will place this candle in the middle of our Advent wreath, lighting it nightly and say a Hail Mary as we light it.  Just as Mary waited for the birth of Christ, we spend Advent waiting for His arrival.

On Christmas Eve, I will take off the beautiful white cloth to reveal what was hidden inside her womb:
BABY JESUS!

I just carved out a little niche to place a figure of the Christ Child.  The green mantle is felt that I secured with craft glue and I made the gold marks with a paint pen.  This was simple and took less than ten minutes.  I have seen some beautiful and elaborate Mary candles on line, but this simple one will work for our family.

The kids are so full of anticipation to see the surprise that is under the white cloth.  I told them we have to wait for Christmas to see! 

After dinner we did the CGS  'Annunciation' presentation, which is in itself, another post...

Here is a picture of our Mary candle in the middle of our Advent Wreath:

 

Making Advent Candles

This year we made our own Advent Candles with this kit.

It was an easy and fun family activity that I hope to make a yearly tradition in our home. 

This is what our candles look like:

Because these burn so quickly and I like to burn candles every night, I am also going to look into electronic Advent candles for future years.  I have seen them in some of the catalogs I get.  Perhaps we will only light the real candles on Sunday, but we could keep the electronic ones burning all week. 

Advent has arrived!

On Sunday we decorated the house for Advent.  I hung up the Jesse Tree banner and underneath I put out all our "Advent Presents"  I wrapped all our Christmas books (we have so many I had to choose the best ones) in purple paper or white paper with a pink bow.  Each night we will open one present at bedtime and that will be our bedtime story.(The presents with the pink bow are for the third week of Advent)  I got this idea originally 2 years ago from Cheryl at 'My Thoughtful Spot', but I have since read about other families doing it too.  So I wonder if they too are following Cheryl's lead or if this is perhaps a tradition that many embrace?  The kids love it and are just so excited!  I do have a couple Christmas movies so I wrapped those as well and maybe I will let them unwrap those on a weekend or something. 

On Sunday, the first day of Advent the kids woke up to a purple present next to their bed and when they opened it they found a chocolate Advent calendar.  The only problem that I did not realize at the time, is that there are 24 chocolates and since Advent started on Nov. 30 this year we are off by a day.  So we may have to "forget" one day to get on track, but that may be hard...the chocolate is the first thing they go for in the morning!

We also decorated the banister going upstairs with purple lights which looks just lovely. 
I put out some purple candles I ordered from a Yankee Candle fund raiser and purple place mats at the table.

Finally, I displayed our nativity scene, all except baby Jesus who will be placed in the cradle on Christmas Eve.  I am having the kids "earn" pieces of hay to put in his cradle.  His cradle started off empty and every time I catch them doing something extra kind or helpful they earn a small piece of hay to lay in his bed.  The goal is to provide a soft bed for him by Christmas.  An older woman who raised 8 kids at our church in Jacksonville, FL told me she used to do this with her kids when they were little and I have read about others doing this.  This is the first year I have done it. 

I had a feeling of accomplishment Sunday night after putting the kids to bed.  My house looked lovely in purple decor, my Jesse tree (which I started back in October) was finally done, my books were wrapped, and the kids were excited about this new liturgical season. 

I have been working since October with all my preparations, but now that I have invested all this time I think future Advents will be a breeze!  To make sure I do not have any stress next year, I plan to re wrap the books in purple paper this year before I store them away until next year.

Then yesterday, I completed my Christmas cards on Shutterfly and pressed send- I am having Shutterfly send them this year.  I uploaded all my addresses (have been working on this a few years now!)  Shutterfly has a feature that allows you to design your cards and personalize each card to the individual and then they will send them out for a small fee.  It was well worth it to me to not have an extra project sitting around the house waiting to get done.  I did order a few loose cards for addresses I could not find or extras I may have forgotten, etc...but in general I am done and feel great.

The few gifts I have left to get I will order on line.  We made all our teacher gifts this year and I picked up gift cards back in October.

Now I can relax and enjoy the true reason for the season!

The Prayer Table

Based on the recommendation of Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, I have added a prayer table to our upstairs living area, right outside the bedroom of both children.  The prayer table is just a little stool I found a thrift shop and painted gold.  The rug is from the 100 yen store in Japan (Japanese Dollar Store) and the little silver candle is from a local thrift shop as well.  I chose this silver candle because not only did I want to have a beautiful candle to light for nightly prayers but this candle can also be a Montessori "work" for the kids (polishing silver).  The little green cloth is actually a handkerchief.  I plan to change this cloth each liturgical season and keep the table decorated in the spirit of the season.

The kids and I have been gathering each night, after stories, showers, and teeth brushing to sit in front of the prayer table.  I light the candle and we sing a song or say a little prayer for a minute.  They love it and the nights where I do not initiate it, they ask for it on their own.

Below you can see my Advent scene.  Not the best picture, but I have changed the cloth to purple.  I found a women's pant suit at the thrift store for $1.00 and cut it up and hemmed it on my machine.  (First time I have used my machine in years!)  On the wall you can see my Advent prophecy card (I will elaborate more on this later...).  I kept the same silver candle and added a little nativity scene. 

No Old Testament

I have been working almost daily on my Jesse Tree kit. The kit I have has the instructions for making a felt symbols to correspond with each of the stories in the Jesse Tree, one for each day of Advent. The Jesse tree idea was inspired by God's promise that 'there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse' (Isaiah 11:1). It is a study of Bible stories from the Old Testament tracing the ancestors of Jesus from the creation of the world to his birth on Christmas day.  Each day, we will learn a bit more of Jesus' heritage.  I have been thinking about doing a Jesse tree for years and have been so excited to introduce this custom into our family this Advent.

So you can imagine my disappointment to discover in my CGS training last week that presenting the Old Testament to young children is discouraged by Sofia Cavalletti, founder of CGS.  Initially as our course leader was presenting this I was thinking, "But what about my Jesse tree...I have worked so hard....surely a few stories from my Jesse tree will not hurt them..." and I was making plans of how I could still do this on my own, on the side...

But the more my course leader spoke of the centrality of the person of Christ in the catechesis, the more I began to understand and respect

Sofia’s reasoning. The Old Testament is full of a lot of wild stories (many that are NOT NICE or child-appropriate), many dreams and visions that may not seem all that different from tall tales and fantasy.  How does the young child distinguish the truth between Jonah and the Whale and Nemo?

In The Religious Potential of the Child, Sofia Cavaletti writes on page 105:

In our estimation, children should be intiated into their present religious reality, and fundamental to it is the presence of a Mediator through whom we go to the Father.  Moreover, in order to approach the Old Testament it is necessary to be able to to move easily within time, and to be able to imagine customs and habits different from our own.

On page 106 she goes on to say:

In the Bible, we find a vast abundance of facts, impressive and easy to recount.  We should make an accurate choice of these to present to children, concentrating soley on the passages the theological meaning of which the child can penetrate…I do not think it right that the child first know certain facts, and only at a later time enter into their theological significance.  I believe an event learned only as a story (or a legend) will stay a story even when the child has grown, and it will be extremely difficult to recover its theological content later on. 

The way things are broken down in the CGS plans, you spend dedicate the teachings of the 3-6 year old to the joy of Jesus and his teachings.  Then, after the child has a firm understanding, at about age 8, you go backwards and enter the Old Testament.  This way the child will understand what the Old Testament stories are leading towards, they will appreciate the big picture, and they will also be more developmentally age appropriate to be exposed to some of the gruesome stories. If the children are exposed to any Old Testament stories, our course leader told us, we should be careful to not go into too much detail.  But as

Sofia said, even telling them the basic facts can may discourage them from digging deeper later, so it is best to just not go there at all.

There are 5 exceptions to this and they are 5 prophecies in the Old Testament that speak of the coming of the Messiah, the Christ Child.  These are to be exposed to the children during Advent.  I even have a neat way of presenting them (more later...)

But what about the Old Testament stories my kids have already been exposed to?  Veggie Tales?  Our Picture Bible?  Vacation Bible School (VBS)?  Well, I highly doubt any of those stories have made a huge impact on them or that much detail was exposed.  Veggie Tales is so silly and VBS is so much fun.  I do not think their young minds really processed a serious message connected to scripture from these brief encounters in the past.   But I have decided to be careful and screen what they are exposed to from here on out.  I have decided to respect all the CGS and not just to pick and choose what I like.

This does not mean I am not throwing my Jesse Tree away, nor am I putting it into storage for 3 years.  I am still doing it this year.  It will just be a fun Advent activity with no meaning.  We will simply place the felt images on the felt tree each day.  Andy and I will do this with the children because we want the Jesse Tree to become one of the traditions in our home that they remember over the years. With time, as they get older, we will begin to introduce the Old Testament stories to them and there will be a moment where it will all connect and come together.  Some day they will realize the meaning behind this fun tradition we always do in Advent.  I look forward to that day when it all comes together for them.