One of my goals for this year is to celebrate more of the feast days of the liturgical year. So I got all gung-ho in January and we made these orange sweet rolls for Our Lady of Altagracia and a granola bar grotto for Our Lady of Lourdes.
But I have quickly realized that, at least right now, celebrating holy days with food doesn't work for us. Mostly because it feels too forced. Sure, the orange rolls were tasty, but why would we celebrate an appearance of Mary that I had never heard of until three days earlier? Trying to celebrate Our Lady of Lourdes was a bit better, since Miriam really enjoys this story of Bernadette, but the granola was too sticky and, well, just look at it.
I couldn't get it out of the pan and just stuck in a penned-on craft stick Mary.
Feast day fail.
I was attempting to modify it from this darling example. See, most of the Catholic celebratory recipes available out there seem to be, well, things we don't eat - we try to avoid processed foods and frequent desserts. (Feast is the exception, but I haven't bought it yet.) I'm trying to institute a family policy of only doing desserts on feast days that are actually meaningful to us - so the biggies like Christmas, Easter, and other holy days of obligation, plus birthdays and namesake saints days.*
I want to celebrate more of the saints, but really I don't know anything about most of them. And that's how I realized the best way for our family to incorporate the saints into our lives - to take the time to learn about them. Picture books are the perfect fit for us right now!
Mostly we read from children's books of saints, but there were several full picture books for the second week of this month!
Picture books allow us all to get a taste of the saints' lives without overcommitting or doing a lot of extra work on our part. (And by that I mean my part. I don't want to stress over whether cornish game hens or chicken would be more appropriate to eat for the Feast of the Presentation. I do realize that's a fairly ridiculous thing to stress about.) We already read every night and frequently during the day. It hasn't been too hard to mark in my planner to pull out or check out certain books.
So that's what we've done so far. And it's working out well! Miriam frequently asks "whose saint is it today?" We're all learning about the saints as a family. And this mama gets to celebrate the liturgical year without feeling overwhelmed.
*Okay, so by "family policy" I mean this is what the kids see. We totally sneak desserts after bedtime. But hopefully as they get older, our own self-control will improve. Hm, we'd better start praying for that now.