Today and over the past two weeks we have been preparing and celebrating St. Nicholas at home and in our Waldorf homeschool co-op. When I began this Waldorf journey, the saints days that they celebrate in their schools really intrigued me. A few of them I had heard of (St. Patrick and St. Valentine) however many were totally new to me! I love new traditions and holidays, especially when they have a religious background that syncs with my beliefs.
In this first semester of our co-op, we have celebrated Michaelmas, Martinmas, and now St. Nicholas' Day- followed by St. Lucia's Day next week. Each celebration has been totally new for me and exciting. Delving into the stories of these saints and using them as vehicles for imparting biblical truths to my children have been truly joyous for me and them.
The neat thing for Craig and I concerning St. Nicholas' day is that Craig actually knew about it and celebrated it as a little boy when he lived in Germany! He also celebrated Martinmas! So needless to say being able to include him in our celebration, and even letting him take the lead with St. Nick's day was so much fun.
Tonight we celebrated and had hot cocoa with cookies. Of course we left some for St. Nick and his horse. We also read stories about him and sang his hymns. I think most importantly for Deirdre was our conversation on specific ways we could show God's love and kindness to our friends and family this Christmas, like St. Nick shows us. She had some good ideas and we also have some planned opportunities. This year at our church on Christmas Eve, instead of a traditional service we will be packing meals to send to school children in North Africa. Our goal is to pack 40,000 meals. Deirdre will be with me that night helping as much as she can.
So I will leave you with our photos of tonight and some resources that we've used this year to help us celebrate!
Always, Nicole
Resources:
This entire site is chock full of songs and crafts. You really need not look any further.
How fun! We celebrated for the first time this year. I've always celebrated St. Lucia's Day b/c it's the National Day of St. Lucia (the country), which is where my family is from. :)
ReplyDeleteVery cool! This will be our 1st time doing both this year!!!
ReplyDeleteWhere did you find out about a school you could send meals too? That is such a great idea. What kind of food were you sending?
ReplyDelete@Meadow, my church went through this organization- http://www.stophungernow.org/site/PageServer. They coordinate where the meals go and provide the food to be packaged. It was a very neat event. We did meet our goal of 40,000. Here is a video of the night that my church made: http://www.peninsulacommunitychapel.com/media.php?pageID=84&itemID=159
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing. I watched your church's video and saved the other link. I've reached my maximum computer time!
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