December Archives - Catholic All Year

Catholic All Year at Home (on FORMED!)

Kendra — Fri, 02 Dec 2022 18:04:58 +0000

I’m so excited to announce Catholic All Year’s newest undertaking . . . we made a real no kidding TV show! And it’s available exclusively on FORMED.

FORMED provides the very best Catholic content to help parishes, families and individuals explore their faith anywhere. Supporting thousands of movies, children’s programs, ebooks, audio, parish programs and studies direct to your browser, mobile or connected device.

Many Catholic churches offer FORMED free to their parishioners, so call your parish office to see if you already have access. If not, you can subscribe for less than $10/month.

The first episode of Catholic All Year at Home is steaming now and it’s all about St. Nicholas Day.

You’ll get to see the kids and I make mulled wine and cider, speculaas cookies, and a Dutch fried meatball pub snack called bitterballen. Also, Bobby cries. #theonionsgothim I’ll share about some of the stories associated with these fun feast day foods, like why St. Nicholas is often pictured with three golden balls and without his mitre.

Most importantly you’ll get to see what actual feast day prep looks like in our kitchen. I hope you’ll be inspired to give it a try in your own home.

St. Nicholas’ Feast Day – December 6th

Complete recipes from this episode are available here:

Speculaas Cookies

Bitterballen

Hot Mulled Wine / Bisschopswijn

Hot Mulled Cider

If you like liturgical living recipes, check out the Catholic All Year Membership. CAY Members get exclusive access to the complete library of hundreds of recipes, organized by month and feast day, plus lots of other liturgical living resources.

We’ve got one more episode of Catholic All Year at Home in post-production right now, for Christmas Eve, so be on the lookout for that one.

If you like the show, please share it with your friends, family members, parish, school, and homeschool communities. We’ve got more episodes planned, but in order to get them greenlit, we need a lot of folks to watch these first two!

You can also find lots more Catholic All Year liturgical living video content on FORMED. Check that out here.

The post Catholic All Year at Home (on FORMED!) appeared first on Catholic All Year.

An Easy, No Mess, Kid-Friendly, Not-Crafty-Mom-Friendly, Last Minute Advent Wreath and a Guide to the Upcoming First Week of Advent

Kendra — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 23:44:00 +0000

Advent starts tomorrow! And that means tonight is Catholic New Year’s Eve, so break out the champagne!

If, like me, you are not quite ready to, um, get ready, I thought I’d share this quick and easy Advent Wreath that is our go-to every year now.

We’ve had lots of different kinds of Advent Wreaths over the years, but I started making this one a few years back because the kids wanted to have one that we could keep lit during our school days, and regular taper candles burn down so quickly, and make it not unlikely that wreath branches, school papers, and toddlers will at some point during Advent . . . catch fire.

Then I noticed these prayer candles! They make a quick, easy, pretty, real but less likely to burn the place down Advent Wreath.

Step 1: Get some jar candles.

Ideally, three purple and one pink. But you can also get white, and tie ribbons around the jar, or paint the jar (but that’s basically a REAL craft, and we’re trying to avoid that, right? Right.).

Prayer candles are ubiquitous around here, and easily available in the Latin food section of most grocery stores. Also dollar stores, Walmart, Target, etc. They sell them at Target online as well. Aldi has the white ones.

If you can find them with no labels, you’re in luck and can skip the next step.

2. Get the labels off.

Soak them for five minutes or so in COLD water. So you don’t melt them.

Then using fingers and table knives, scrape the labels off.

Yes. Scraping pictures of Our Lady off DOES stress me out a tiny bit. I may have actually told Gus out loud to quit stabbing Our Lady in the face and just gently slide it off. But there’s nothing officially inappropriate about removing a religious image from something. We just blow Our Lady, or whatever saint it is, a good bye kiss and git er done.

For the last bits of glue, steel wool works well.

3. Gather some evergreens.

There’s a lot of symbolism involved in an Advent Wreath. The flames represent Christ as the light of the world, the four candles are the four weeks of Advent, and the four thousand years that the Chosen People waited for the Chosen One, the circle stands for eternity, as do evergreen plants. Pine cones and seed pods and berries represent new life in Christ.

So, we like to gather a selection of evergreens from our yard: rosemary, juniper, pines, whatever. We find as many little cones and seeds, and berries as we can and include those. If you don’t have evergreens in the yard, you might be able to scrounge some from neighbors, or a park, or a local Christmas tree lot.

4. Arrange on a platter.

It’s super fast to put together!

An easy, kid-friendly, non-crafty-mom-friendly Advent Wreath that the kids and I put together this morning, for about $4. See the step by step in my IG stories! #advent #catholic #liturgicalliving

A post shared by Kendra Tierney (@kendra_tierney) on Nov 30, 2017 at 12:10pm PST

Just plunk down the candles, one, two, three, four, and arrange the greenery around them. This is something toddlers are great at helping with. I try to keep a semblance of a hole in the middle, for the circle-ness.

5. Enjoy!

On the first Sunday of Advent, we bless the Advent Wreath with holy water. Then we say the Advent Wreath prayers for the first week each night of the week at dinner, or each morning before school if we won’t all be home that evening. You can find the Advent Wreath Prayers here at Catholic Culture.

Using jar candles means our wreath lasts all season long, even burning it a couple hours a day. If we somehow burn through a candle or two early, I can just grab another one at the grocery store. And there’s nothing to store (and FIND!) for next year. We just let the candles burn down to nothing on Christmas Eve and toss the jars (allowed even though they were blessed, because they have been used up).

Here’s my first attempt at a how-to video. Note the super-professional portrait aspect ratio. Oops.

Stir Up Sunday

The first Sunday of Advent is also known as Stir Up Sunday, because the words of the old collect (preserved in our Advent Prayers for the week) are this: O Lord, stir up Thy might, we beg Thee, and come, That by Thy protection we may deserve to be rescued from the threatening dangers of our sins and saved by Thy deliverance. Through Christ our Lord.

The story goes that, as wives and cooks were in Mass, they’d hear the collect and be reminded that it was time to start the Christmas Puddings! I have never attempted a Christmas Pudding myself, but I do like to use Stir Up Sunday to make some loaves of quick breads like gingerbread or coffee cake that I can store in the freezer and give as gifts to our teachers and delivery guys. And I usually save a couple loaves for our Christmas Morning breakfast! There’s one thing officially out of the way.

All the kids get to help with the stirring!

As Advent begins, we’ll pull out our Christmas and Advent books, our Advent decorations, and our Advent calendars. We’ll put the manger out for Straw for Baby Jesus.

And this week, we drew names among the kids for their Secret Santa partners. Rather than nine kids buying junk presents for each other, we have them each choose one sibling, and all Advent they do good deeds for that sibling and they buy one nice gift for that one sibling, to give on Christmas morning. They’re still welcome to give homemade gifts to all their other siblings.

We also choose our saints for the year using Jen Fulwiler’s Saint’s Name Generator or by randomly flipping through our four volume copy of Butler’s Lives of the Saints. (There’s a shorter, modernized version too.)

First Week of Advent

Also coming up for the first week of Advent are the Feasts of St. Nicholas, St. Ambrose, the Immaculate Conception, and St. Juan Diego.

The kids will leave their shoes and letters to Santa out for St. Nicholas on the night before his feast day on December 6th. And in the morning they’ll find some chocolate coins and a candy cane crozier, and a book or two.

On the feast of St. Ambrose, we’ll usually do a candle craft of some sort, like these tissue paper candle transfers, or these pinecone fire starters, and we’ll eat meat-free for the vigil of the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.

The Immaculate Conception is a Friday this year, and you know what THAT means!

This post has how we usually celebrate. We’ll go to Mass and have an all white meal for the day, like this yummy no boil Chicken Alfredo Bake.

And Saturday is the feast of St. Juan Diego, which is an excellent excuse for a taco night and some Mexican Wedding Cookies.

If you’d like to keep up with the feasts, these are all marked on my liturgical year wall calendar, available as an immediate pdf download here

Or as a wall calendar here. I’ve discounted the calendar 15% on my end, and there’s also a 20% discount on top of that available from the publisher with the code BOOKCALSAVE (all caps), the code is good through midnight December 4th. If you missed that code, check here for the most recent one.

The Month of the Immaculate Conception

In fact, this entire month is devoted to the Immaculate Conception (of Mary, not of Jesus). I’m excited this year to have the calendar images to remind me of the traditional monthly devotions. And if you’re also playing along with the images on your phone home screen and lock screen, George says: It’s time to switch to December!

If you didn’t get the images in the bundle, they’re available in my Etsy shop now.

Have yourself a happy little Advent, everyone!

THREE REASONS I LOVE ADVENT

OUR FAVORITE CHRISTMAS PICTURE BOOKS

ADVENT: HOW WE TRY TO CELEBRATE THINGS IN THEIR PROPER SEASON WITHOUT FEELING LIKE TOTAL JERKS

A LITTLE FEAST OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION AND A LITTLE ABOUT FEASTS

The post An Easy, No Mess, Kid-Friendly, Not-Crafty-Mom-Friendly, Last Minute Advent Wreath and a Guide to the Upcoming First Week of Advent appeared first on Catholic All Year.

Liturgical Living for Beginners: An Our Lady of Guadalupe Play Date, with help from me and CCC

Kendra — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 16:09:00 +0000

This is a sponsored post. See my disclosure policy.

I had such fun last spring putting together a St. Patrick’s Day play date that I decided to do another one . . . this time for the upcoming feasts of St. Juan Diego on December 9th and Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12th.

Getting started with liturgical living in the home can feel like a really daunting task. It did for me, anyway. But this is a festive time of year, and a great time to invite a few friends over. I love liturgically-themed play dates. Just a couple other moms, their kids . . . a couple of snacks, an activity, and a book or movie about the saint.

If you’ve never done ANY liturgical living in the home, this is a an excellent way to start.

Growing up in Southern California, I’ve always had a great love for Our Lady of Guadalupe. I remember girls coming to school with their hair in braids for the occasion. Is that a real thing? I don’t know. The internet won’t tell me. But it’s been fun keeping up that tradition with my own girls. Here’s 2012 . . .

Aww, look at tiny Anita!

But back to the party. I’m going to talk you through it step by step.

– the guests –

Probably, you’re going to want people to come to your party. So, you’re
going to want to invite them. I’ve done play dates like this for as few
as three and as many as thirty kids. I think ideal is around six to ten
kids. Evite is great for keeping track of people, but for something like
this, I find a good old-fashioned email is just as good, maybe better.
You can just type up the what, when, where and send it, or, if you’re
feeling fancy, you can make your own invitation image in Picmonkey, and email that.

Or you can use this one . . .

If you right click on it, and save the image to your computer, you can then pull it up in Picmonkey and type in the text you want to add, save it again, then email it out.

Or ya know, just print it out, write on it with a pen, and hand it to people. Up to you.

– the craft –

I like to have a little craft available to do as families are arriving. It can be a simple coloring page and some crayons . . .

found here


found here

Or something a little more involved. Catholic Icing sells printable ornaments for all the advent saints, including Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe:

Or make your own tilma out of a paper grocery bag! We’ve done these, they turn out so cute.

Tissue paper flowers are great as a craft at the party for older kids, or if all your guests are little, you can make them ahead of time yourself for decoration. They come together quickly and are very festive and authentically Mexican.

– the snacks –

Kids like snacks. Everyone likes snacks. In fact, the food is where I’m
always tempted to get carried away. There are always so many cute ideas
out there. But too many choices is overwhelming for little kids, and a lot of work for hostesses. Usually one beverage choice plus water, and a couple of food choices is plenty.

Mexican hot chocolate is very popular with my kids. The real thing is called champurrado and it is UH-mazing, but unless you’ve got a Mexican grocery store nearby, you’re probably not going to be able to get the ingredients. It’s also kind of complicated to make. But very, very tasty. If you want to cheat, you can just make regular powdered hot chocolate and put cinnamon in it. Kids will still think you are pretty awesome. If you want to feel better about cheating, you can get the Mexican kind of powdered hot chocolate.

The traditional side to the chocolate is churros, which are a long, fried, donut-type pastry. They sell them frozen at grocery stores around here, and they come with a special little tube you can microwave them in, so they come out crunchy. Then you roll them in cinnamon and sugar.

If you don’t want to invite a bunch of other people’s kids over to your house and then hop them up on hot chocolate and sugar-covered donuts . . . you could always go with quesadillas.

Kids love ’em.

A make your own nacho bar is fun, with chips, beans, cheese, salsa, sour cream, and guacamole.

– the entertainment –

After snack time, I like to have some sort of saint-themed entertainment for the kids. We have quite a few of CCC of America’s Saints and Heroes animated films, and they just so happen to have a perfectly lovely movie about St. Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe, which is only a half an hour . . . just the right length for younger liturgical year observers.

JUAN DIEGO: MESSENGER OF GUADALUPE is the true story of how the Blessed
Mother chose a hero for a key role in a beautiful miracle that would
united diverse peoples and change the course of history. In the Basilica
of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City the miracle of the tilma of
Juan Diego may still be seen, just as it was seen by the bishop in 1531.

They make great gifts for kids, grandchildren, godchildren, etc.

And SPEAKING of liturgical living, tomorrow is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (when Mary was conceived, not Jesus) and it’s a Holy Day of Obligation, so get thee to church!

Here’s how we usually celebrate that one:

A Little Feast of the Immaculate Conception and a Little About Feasts

The post Liturgical Living for Beginners: An Our Lady of Guadalupe Play Date, with help from me and CCC appeared first on Catholic All Year.

An at Home Nativity Play for Increased Christmas Awesomeness

Kendra — Mon, 23 Dec 2013 01:44:00 +0000

Maybe it’s the new baby, but Advent has FLOWN by in our house. Christmas is almost here!

I just had to re-type this because I’m pretty sure I have to say my favorite part of our Christmas celebration is the Mass. But a VERY close second is our At Home Family Nativity Play that we put on each Christmas evening.

that’s little Jack and even littler pregnant Betty

A few years ago, I sat down and typed up a script, based on Luke 2:1-20 and Matthew 2:1-12. You can find the script here at Catholic Culture.

For a set we use an old cardboard box and some stuffed animals. Costumes are all dad’s t-shirts. Each person gets one for a tunic and one for a headdress. I also made some cardboard angel wings and found some sticks to be staffs, but you really wouldn’t need to do that part. I’m an over-doer. You don’t have to be.

who says there wasn’t a hippo in the stable?

Grown-ups and big kids read from the script, and for little kids I just prompt them what to say. Everyone sings along with familiar songs. It turns out really cute with very little advance prep.

Here it is in action:

see it here on youtube

(it’s only 5 minutes long)

note: I put together the script at Catholic Culture after this Christmas. I wanted one that was mostly just the Bible and couldn’t find one, so I made it!

I’d love to hear about it if any of you try this at your own homes this year!

By the way: giant baby spotted hanging out with the stuffed nativity.

Look out, Baby Jesus!

———————–

And, um, my book . . . available for preorder . . . great for kids, grandkids, Godchildren, etc., etc. . . .

Click through to Amazon here: A Little Book about Confession for Children

Right now it says it will ship mid-March. My publisher says it’s more likely to ship in February, but they can’t be sure. So right now, it says March. Hey, it’s only $8.99!

If you order the book as a gift on Amazon, you can print out this lovely certificate to stuff in a stocking or tuck in a card. Just click on the link to download the printable PDF!

click HERE to download

————–

And, it’s Sunday, so here’s what Lulu and I wore to Mass:

Me . . .
Sweater: Banana Republic
Skirt: Gymboree (the girls had dresses that matched it a couple years ago)
Shoes: Steve Madden

Lulu . . .
Sweater & tights: Gymboree
Dress & boots: Old Navy

I’d like to point out that at 3 1/2 weeks old, Lulu has perfected the official What I Wore Sunday “Random Sideways Look Off Into the Distance.” She’s a real pro.

Thanks to the Ladies at Fine Linen and Purple for hosting.

Have yourselves a Merry Little Christmas!

The post An at Home Nativity Play for Increased Christmas Awesomeness appeared first on Catholic All Year.

Keeping Advent: Our Family’s Traditions

Kendra — Thu, 05 Dec 2013 16:00:00 +0000

Here’s a little glimpse at what the first few days of Advent have looked like at our house . . .

Journey to Bethlehem

(the board game)

It’s pretty much the best advent-themed board game ever. But it’s a very limited edition, since Jack made it when he was in the first grade.

It’s basically Candyland, but the goal is to follow Mary and Joseph from Nazareth to Bethlehem. The board is decorated with clipart and handwritten phrases like: “Those wisemen know the way” and “WATCH OUT! It’s King Herod”

Good times.

Nativity Sets

We’ve got our Willow Tree Nativity Set
on the mantle (thanks to Christmas presents to me from Gramma!). The Holy Family is on one side, the Wise Men are on the other.

I’ve heard a lot about some people’s Wise Men having adventures during Advent, but our Wise Men wait to start their journey until Christmas, then they travel through the house and arrive back on the other side of the mantle in time for Epiphany.

The kids’ Little People Nativity
is all set up in front of the fire place. I was looking around, and most of the sets we have don’t seem to be in production anymore, which is really too bad.

We’ve got the Nativity Set, The Inn at Bethlehem, the Three Wise Men with Tents, the Lil’ Shepherds with Hill and Well, the Lil’ Drummer Boy with Barn, and the Castle (which isn’t part of the nativity collection, but we needed it for King Herod). Most of the sets seem to be available on ebay, for much cheaper than they are on Amazon.

We’ve also got a stuffed nativity set, excellent for taking on stroller rides. I’ve looked around a bit, but it doesn’t look like it’s available anywhere either. But here’s a different plush nativity, that I like even more.

Advent Calendars

Our family Advent Calendar is called The Puffy Tree. It’s the Advent Calendar the husband had growing up. Not the exact one, but the exact same kind, because when my mother-in-law bought the kit at a church bazaar in the late 70’s she bought one for herself and one for each of the kids to have when they were grown. That’s planning ahead folks!

The kids also each have a Lego Calendar this year. Gus and Bobby both have late fall birthdays and for the past few years have requested Lego Advent Calendars as their birthday presents. Then, at Christmas, Jack has carefully repacked each little window with a baggie of legos so it could be used again, and now we have enough for each kid to have his own. They take up our entire front hallway.

Advent Wreaths

On our dining room table, we have a wreath with (last year’s) Beeswax Advent Candles, that the kids got to roll themselves. It’s such a fun craft, and really easy enough for even toddlers to do with supervision. We do have another set for this year, but I figured we’d better use these up first.

On the kitchen table, we have a wreath made with juniper branches from our backyard, and glass jar votive candles, widely available at grocery stores around here. They come with a sticker of a saint or Our Lady on them, but the stickers come off and they make nice non-drippy Advent Candles.

Christmas and Advent Books

I’ve written already about our favorite chapter books and our favorite picture books for Advent and Christmas. And I’m looking forward to some new ones that we’ll be adding to the collection soon! But this is what the seasonal book chair looks like right now.

Currently, we are halfway through The Twenty-four Days Before Christmas and have read Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer about seventeen times. Blerg.

Straw for Baby Jesus

There’s still plenty of room for straw to make Baby Jesus’ bed nice and soft for him come Christmas Eve, but the kids are in the super-motivated for a new thing stage. So, it’s adding up fast!

Winter Dishes

Does a person NEED another complete set of dishes for wintertime? No, she does not. But, boy do I ever really, really like them. I received them as Christmas gifts from my mom and mother-in-law over the two Christmases that we lived in Chicago. Just look at the little Nativity scene on that little platter. So cute!

The Christmas Novena

In the comments of this post, Julie asked if I would make available the booklet we use for our Christmas Novena, so I created a pdf that you can download. And . . . here it is! If you are able to print double sided, it should print out as a booklet that you can fold in half and staple along the edge. If you don’t have that capability, just print it out, cut all the pages in half, put them in the right order, and staple them together.

Update: Sorry you guys, this booklet is kinda kicking my butt. Anyway, I put the whole thing into a word document, and made THAT a pdf, and when I print it out on my printer I can select the “booklet” option, and it works. Here’s the new one. Please let me know if it’s still not working for you and I’ll try again.

This Baby

So cute. So sweet. So happy to sit in my lap while I blog. She’s practically perfect in every way. So far.

If you’d like to keep track of ALL the feasts of the Catholic liturgical year, I’ve created a wall calendar to help you do it!

It features the all the feasts and fasts of the Universal Calendar and then some, illustrated with images featuring the traditional Catholic monthly devotions. It’s an easy visual way to bring liturgical living into your home. You can keep track of the feasts and fasts and seasons of the Catholic year, and be reminded to focus your prayer on a different aspect of our faith each month.

January:The Holy Name of Jesus

February: The Holy Family

March: St. Joseph

April: The Blessed Sacrament

May: Mary

June: The Sacred Heart of Jesus

July: The Precious Blood

August Immaculate Heart of Mary

September: The Seven Sorrows of Mary

October: The Holy Rosary

November: The Poor Souls in Purgatory

December: The Immaculate Conception

As the Church year begins with December, so does this calendar. You get December 2018 through December 2019, thirteen months. Available for purchase here. Thanks!

Coupon codes are available from the publisher here.

The post Keeping Advent: Our Family’s Traditions appeared first on Catholic All Year.

Three Reasons I Love Advent

Kendra — Mon, 02 Dec 2013 02:00:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, I wrote about our family’s advent philosophy, but now that advent is actually upon us, I wanted to share a little more about our three favorite advent family traditions.

1. Little People Nativity

We have many nativity sets. We’ve got a big outdoor one, we’ve got a fancy mantel one, we’ve got a tiny tabletop one. And my mom is kind of obsessed with them. She’s got dozens, from all over the world. I love them all, but my all time favorite is the Little People Nativity that takes over our living room from December 1st through January 6th.

It’s big. We’ve got the stable, plus all the add on sets, like the Wisemen and the Shepherds and the Drummer Boy. Plus we added King Herod’s castle to the mix because you really can’t act out the whole story without it (although it’s a bit of a stretch to work the dragon in effectively).

I love it because it really makes the story of Jesus’ birth come alive for my kids. I can watch them act it out over and over again talking to themselves and/or arguing details with each other. For our other sets, we don’t put out the baby Jesus until Christmas Eve, but for the kids’ set we let them have Jesus right away. The story isn’t as fun without him.

All of our other nativity sets are decorations, but the Little People one is the one that really means something to our family. If you don’t already have one in your home I can’t recommend it enough.

2. Straw for Baby Jesus

We have had such good luck with our Lenten sacrifice beans that we wanted something similar to help the kids focus their intentions during advent. So, we started doing straw for Baby Jesus.

I’ve since seen many other versions, but it’s a pretty simple concept. When kids make sacrifices or exhibit especially good behavior, they get to put a piece of straw into Baby Jesus’ manger. If they are good enough, then the Baby Jesus has a nice soft bed to lay in on Christmas Eve.

We have a really great little wooden manger my dad built for us, but a wooden crate or a doll cradle, or even a shoebox would work. We use cut up pieces of yarn, but real straw would work also. The first couple of years, we just used one of Betty’s baby dolls, but now we have this Baby Jesus.

During the day, I will reward kids for good behavior or listening right away or helping someone else by letting them put in a piece of straw. Then, at evening prayers, they can also award each other pieces of straw if someone has done something nice for them, and they can put in their own pieces if they can come up with specific personal sacrifices they have made.

Then, after we’ve finished all our decorating and preparations on Christmas Eve, the last thing we do before we go to bed is to put the Baby Jesus in his (hopefully) nice soft crib. We sing Silent Night and Away in a Manger and then the kids go to sleep.

It’s lovely!

3. Christmas Novena

I am a supporter of Jesse Trees, (and even have posts where I help you make your own) but we don’t do one. We don’t do one because I really, really love our Christmas Novena, and it’s just too much to attempt both.

Here’s what we do:

I found the text here at Catholic Culture, and printed it into booklets. The novena should rightly be celebrated from the 16th to the 24th, but since we wait until Christmas Eve to get our tree, we shift it one day and do the novena from the 15th to the 23rd. That also allows our friends who have joined us over the years to do their own family celebrations on Christmas Eve.

The coolest part of it for us has been inviting people we know (or sometimes don’t know yet) from other countries or parts of the country to join us and share with us how Christmas is celebrated all over the world.

We’ve have had some VERY memorable visits, especially the priest from Africa who told the kids about the big Christmas Eve cattle slaughter, and how the little boys who were charged with bringing the raw meat home to their houses had to bring sticks with them to keep the wild dogs at bay. . . . Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

We do Santa Claus at our house, but I think that having an awareness of other cultural traditions has helped with keeping our focus on the Baby Jesus, which is the one thing every country’s celebration shares.

Many of the families have been friends of ours already, but we also have just gone up to people at the parish who seem to have foreign accents and invited them. It’s been a great way to meet other members of our parish.

It’s not a requirement, but sometimes they bring us yummy international foods to try. Which brings me to the subject of treats. We don’t eats Christmas treats during advent, in keeping with our attempt to maintain it as a season of waiting and preparation. But the Christmas Novena allows us to ease up the rules slowly. We’ll usually have a small snack and a treat type drink like egg nog or hot chocolate or apple cider, and over the last couple of days we’ve even been known to have cookies.

The Novena itself really is beautiful, it incorporates ancient prayers like the O Antiphons, and beautiful timeless songs like O Come, O Come Emmanuel. It really makes me feel connected to the timelessness of our Church.

We didn’t feel like we could manage both the Jesse Tree and the Christmas Novena, so we just do the Novena. If you’re not ready to start your Jesse Tree tonight, maybe the Christmas Novena would work for your family.Update: in the comments, Julia asked if I would include a link to the booklet I made of the prayers and readings for the Christmas Novena. So . . . here it is! If you are able to print double sided, it should print out as a booklet that you can fold in half and staple along the edge. If you don’t have that capability, just print it out, cut all the pages in half, put them in the right order, and staple them together.

There are many other things I love about Advent, including reading books as a family (here are some of our favorites), an advent wreath, and really celebrating the feasts that fall during advent. And the fact that we do things differently than “everyone” really just serves to reinforce our own family culture — so I love that too.If you’d like to keep track of ALL the feasts of the Catholic liturgical year, I’ve created a wall calendar to help you do it!2025 Wall Calendar