Warning: Catholic post ahead. lol.
Kate is getting to the age where mass attendance isn’t exactly at the top of her “most fun things to do list” and I found myself wanting to get her excited about our Faith. As I was poking around the internet, I found a blog, Catholic All Year, where this family lives and CELEBRATES their Catholic faith. Sign me up! We always do an activity based advent calendar, so this year I just followed the blog and made some of the actives tied to some of the feast days during advent and it was a big hit!
So, this year I’m going to pick a Saint each month and celebrate their Feast Day! My hope is to get my children excited to learn more about their Faith. 🙂 Since I’m not into recreating the wheel, I thought I would share with y’all what I’m doing. Or rather what I’m thinking about doing. lol. I like to start with themed food because I have to feed my family anyway so it’s not exactly adding to my work load. The crafts and videos and such might happen, but they very well might not. If you’re interested in more info, I highly recommend the book, The Catholic All Year Compendium: Liturgical Living for Real Life by Kendra Tierney.
Here are 3 Saints for February. (What can I say, I had a hard time narrowing it down!)
February 1. St Brigid of Ireland. She lived in Ireland in the 5th century and tended the cows on her father’s farm. She often got in trouble for giving away the butter she churned to the poor. One day she was about to get punished for giving away all of her butter, so she prayed to God to help her and her butter churns were miraculously filled with butter. She then decided to become a Christian and eventually became a nun, establishing the first order of nuns in Ireland.
Food: Scones with butter and jam. We may or may not make our own butter. We may or may not make our own scones.
Craft: Woven cross. There are tons of examples on Pinterest, but I think we’ll do the pipe cleaner one.
February 6. St Paul Maki and Companions (the Japanese Martyrs). In 1597, Br, Paul Maki and 25 companions were crucified in Nagasaki, Japan for their Faith. I’m not going to lie, I added this one because I will take any excuse to make sushi. lol.
Food: Homemade Sushi. Raw fish optional.
February 11. Our Lady of Lourdes. In 1858, Mary appeared to St Bernadette in a grotto in Lourdes, France.
Food: French food! But I’m not that fancy so probably baguettes?
Craft: I found loads of ideas on Pinterest for making a grotto. If I actually get my stuff together and we end up making one, I’ll post some pics.
Movie: Formed has a movie about St Bernadette and Our Lady of Lourdes and our parish has a membership!
I know what you’re thinking, what about St Valentine?!? Well, obviously we’re going to do all things pink and hearts on the 14th, but I actually couldn’t find much information about him so I didn’t want to count it as our feast day for the month.