Liturgical Living: Michaelmas Through Epiphany

I had the greatest of intentions to write about each of the liturgical calendar feasts we observed this year, starting with Michaelmas back in September, but here we are in January having had Michaelmas, All Saints’ Day, St. Lucia Day, St. Nicholas Day, Christmas Eve, Christmas itself, and Epiphany, and I have written about none of them. I guess we’re just setting the bar for 2022 goals very, very low.

I suppose we could have leaned into each one of these holidays a bit more - in fact, I think Michaelmas probably had the most intentionality about it, and each holiday/feast day afterward had a bit less, but I've really enjoyed the traditions we’ve started, and we can always build on them as time goes by!

As such, here’s a brief rundown of what we did for each.

Michaelmas

This one largely followed the same pattern of what we did last year. Like before, my agenda for the day was to go exploring outside, pick some asters for our dining room table, have a feast, and sing a hymn after dinner. Most of that went well, although after finding quite a few bugs on our wild asters, I decided that next year…we’ll plant some asters in our garden and harvest those instead.

True to form, our feast involved a roasted chicken, carrots (because tradition!), and a St. Michael’s bannock, and this year I did find a way to incorporate a blackberry dessert that wasn’t straight up blackberry pie, and it was a hit. Thanks, Claire Saffitz/the Dessert Person cookbook, for an excellent blackberry tart recipe!

I know I mentioned All Saints Day in my first paragraph, but upon looking through pictures from the past several months, apparently we did nothing that day. Room for improvement next year, I guess. We DID dress up for Halloween though, which maybe sort of counts? Unless it’s blasphemous? Jury’s out on that one. I’m including it here only because Charlotte and Wilbur were awfully cute.

While Fern Arable made an appearance, Farmer Zuckerman preferred to be behind the camera lens instead of in front of it.

Moving on to Advent!

We do “regular” Advent activities, including a Jesse tree (I think we made it through day 16 or so this year, so it’s a work in progress), a chocolate Advent calendar from Trader Joe’s (because who doesn’t love chocolate?), and decorating the house (which I suppose should traditionally be done on Christmas Eve, but a decorated house is so festive!), but then there are some feast days during Advent that we’ve built into our Advent routine over the past couple of years that I really like.

St. Nicholas Day

As an Anglican, I’m ashamed to say this one wasn’t on my radar until last year, when I saw other Anglican and Catholic moms posting on social media about it. At that point I realized we were missing out on some fun, and immediately decided to do something about it the night before it happened. This year, I was slightly more prepared. The kids put their shoes by the door the night before, and in the morning, they were filled with chocolate coins and oranges! Maybe next year we’ll go all out and add some fuzzy socks or something, but this year, we kept it pretty simple. We also read a book about St. Nicholas, but also the sugar from the chocolate coins mostly prevented us from doing anything productive until the second half of the day. Keep that in mind if you decide to participate in the future.

The following week brought us to the next feast day!

St. Lucia Day

St. Lucia Day was tied at our house for least effort involved. We busted out our anglaspel Christmas decoration (which I LOVE - new favorite Christmas decoration by a long shot) and made ourselves some lussekatter saffron buns. That afternoon, Elise had a bad headache, so the day sort of ended on a low note, but the holiday was marked nonetheless.

The next few weeks were marked more by Advent/Christmas church services, including my favorite service of the year for oboe-playing: Lessons and Carols. By the time we get to that service, it usually feels like Christmas has officially arrived, even though it’s a few weeks ahead of time. Per usual, it was full of jollity, and this year I was able to do two of them, which made it even more fun. With all the festivities leading up to Christmas, however, I was getting a bit tired trying to figure out how to balance feasting with church schedules…

Christmas Eve

…Enter Sally Clarkson with a timely Instagram post (and blog) about how her family always did a simple Shepherd’s Meal on Christmas Eve, and I instantly knew that was the solution. Our menu became a crockpot soup with sourdough baked in the morning, alongside fruit, nuts, and cheese. We gathered family after our Christmas Eve church service, lit as many candles as we could find, turned out all the lights (except for Christmas lights, of course!) and enjoyed our meal. While I can’t speak for the rest of the family, it was perhaps my favorite observance of this whole string of feasts. We’ll definitely repeat this new-to-us tradition next year!

Christmas Day

Christmas Day itself always starts the same way at our house with a blurry picture, presents for our immediate family, and cinnamon rolls (confession: this year, they came from Costco rather than our own oven).

After that, we get together with the family again, and this year we went to my parents’ house. While I can’t really claim this as liturgically-focused, we do always have a Yule Log cake, and while I didn’t roll it particularly well this year, the taste made up for its appearance!

The day included your standard stockings, presents, and feasting, but we finished the day with carol singing thanks to our resident pianist and a large number of various hymnals. Fortunately, most of them had the same words, so we all sounded relatively together!

In the days following, our family promptly got sick, although we have (thus far) avoided Covid somehow, and we remained cycling through each member being sick for the remainder of Christmastide. New Year’s Eve happened without much fanfare, James had a birthday during which he was stricken with RSV and a double ear infection, and we watched far more tv shows than were good for us all the way through to Epiphany. As a result, Epiphany was a last-minute after thought that was only noted by the baking of a galette des rois, which was very tasty.

Next year, we might add in a blessing of the home from the Book of Common Prayer and/or a parade with the wise men from our nativity set, with We Three Kings as festive music to go along with it, but we’ll see!

Now we have a little break, but after quite the litany of feasts and such, a break feels quite restful! It’s been such a joy to really delve into the richness that the liturgical calendar has to offer, because the more reminders we have of God’s goodness, the more we remember it day to day. I’m so grateful to have those reminders for myself, but even more so to be able to make them part of our family culture. Thanks be to God.

Liturgical Living: St. Patrick's Day

Back in September, specifically around Michaelmas on the 29th, I wrote about how I’d been wanting to add more liturgical patterns to our yearly home rhythms. We’re a few months into that now, and while I still consider myself quite the extreme novice in this area, I thought it might be helpful to provide an update. In my research I’ve found that this type of information is readily available to you…if you’re Catholic. Liturgy, feast days, and holy holidays seem to be automatically built into a Catholic lifestyle, but that is not the case if you’re not Catholic. Hello there, fellow Anglicans! This is for us!

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a few blogs that have been helpful in this realm already. First, my friend Sarah has been a significant inspiration when it comes to finding ways to integrate the liturgical calendar into her home. I mean, look at all these great ideas for Holy Week! Also, while I don’t know this blogger personally, I love all the ideas that Hannah has for Advent on her blog, The Art in Life. Finally, Phylicia Masonheimer has excellent ideas for celebrating small holidays in a way that elevates church history, like these for Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day (you’ll see a lot of similarities between her list and our activities here)! Since all of these mothers have more children that I do, I feel comforted in the fact that all of these things are doable with multiple kids under our roof, and that is no small thing.

Today is St. Patrick’s Day, and since we had so much fun observing Michaelmas and more recently Valentine’s Day (albeit a much smaller celebration), I decided we needed to do St. Patrick’s Day as well.

Look! We wore green!

I based our holiday agenda on what we had done for Michaelmas, because it was great fun. The basics: have a feast, add some (very very simple) decor, and sing a related hymn or two. I also decided that we should have some learning materials, so I got a few books via Thrift Books. Tomie dePaola’s Patrick: Patron Saint of Ireland was my favorite of the bunch, although two of the books I ordered have yet to arrive in my mailbox, so I suppose that could change. Finally, we made sure to listen to traditional Irish music and do some Irish-themed crafts, like these fun name cards for our feast table.

Elise even made a full-sized one as a picture rather than a name tag!

To give credit where credit is due, I got the idea for these here.

For our feast, I went for a fully Irish menu: Guinness beef stew with colcannon and Irish soda bread, with an apple cake for dessert. I’d rate the stew, colcannon, and soda bread all five stars, but I’m not linking the apple cake since we all agreed we’d try something else next time. I’m planning ahead and I’m nearly certain this will be dessert next year.

And I will say…the cake LOOKED good, so it definitely had that going for it, if nothing else.

Before eating, we prayed a portion of St. Patrick’s Breastplate, which helped us remember why we were celebrating. Perhaps when the kids are a little older and less wiggly, we’ll pray the whole thing, but even the bit that we did was a blessing.

But beyond the food, the best part of celebrations like this is the hymn singing. Especially in Covid-world, where our regular source of communal singing (church) is on hiatus, singing a hymn together is something that I will never take for granted.

With an assortment of hymnals, we had slightly different lyrics among us and even a different number of verses for Be Thou My Vision, but it didn’t matter. It felt a little bit like a foretaste of heaven, which is what I have certainly sorely needed lately. Next year we’ll also do a bit more planning, so that our only version of I Bind Unto Myself Today isn’t only available in one hymnal, with only the melody printed. You win some, you lose some.

Like I’ve said before, this year (plus!) has really hammered home to me how much I’ve needed a firm foundation of faith to carry me through harder days, and therefore how much I want to provide opportunities for my kids to grow that foundation as well. Our pastor’s statement - “We remember what we celebrate” - along with the richness of tradition found through church history gave us a treasure trove of celebratory occasions that might have otherwise been overlooked, and that point us back toward the goodness of our God.

“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” Ephesians 16-21

Michaelmas and Liturgical Living

It’s not anything revolutionary to say that managing family life during this pandemic has been challenging, but I’ve found that it’s brought to fruition a few things that I’d been wanting to implement in our home for a long time. Up until now I hadn’t had the…time? motivation? GUMPTION to make them happen, but since so much of our focus is on being at home (and being at home well) these days, I’ve started to do a few things that I hope to keep as part of our family traditions for a long time.

One of those things is paying a bit more attention to the liturgical calendar. Just prior to James’ baptism on August 16th, we met with a few families and our priest to discuss the meaning of baptism and how we were going to be leading our children in faith. One of the things he said stuck with me: “We remember what we celebrate.” And it’s true! For most people, myself included, our fondest memories of childhood surround celebrations - Christmas, holidays, birthdays, achievements.

I want my children to have fond memories linked to celebrations of God’s goodness. That’s easy for things like Easter and Christmas, but those only come around once a year. But the liturgical year includes so much more richness that we haven’t yet plumbed, and now is the time.

I started small. Michaelmas, a feast day on the liturgical schedule that celebrates Michael the Archangel defeating Satan, was next up in the calendar year (September 29th), and historically was celebrated with a host of traditions. These traditions ranged from the doable to the folklore-esque, so I picked from that bank of ideas and made us a Michaelmas celebration. I chose four things to do: we’d spend time outdoors to appreciate the unseasonably warm but still fall-ish weather; we’d pick wild asters (also known as St. Michael’s daisies) to make a bouquet for our dinner table; we’d have a feast for dinner; and we’d sing a hymn. Fortunately our hymnal contains a handful of hymns for the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, so we had some good ones to choose from.

For the outdoor adventure, we checked out a place we’d never been before, and it was a complete home run. I can’t believe we’ve lived in this area now for five years and hadn’t discovered it yet! The Parker River Wildlife Sanctuary made me totally love Plum Island, and I now “get” Plum Island. It previously hadn’t held a lot of appeal for me beyond one of our favorite breakfast spots (I’m looking at you, Mad Martha’s), but now consider me a FAN.

When we got home from our exploration, I put the kids down for their nap/quiet time, and then I started cooking. In Celtic tradition, the Michaelmas menu usually includes roasted goose, carrots, blackberry pie, and St. Michael’s bannock. Not having a goose to roast and not particularly loving blackberries myself, I opted for a roast chicken, carrots, roasted potatoes, and St. Michael’s bannock, for which I found a recipe thanks to the wealth of information that is the internet. For my own future reference: I used this recipe for the chicken and gravy (though the gravy was FAR too salty, so I’d do that differently next time), and this recipe for the carrots. I didn’t use a recipe for the roasted potatoes…just chopped them up, doused them with olive oil, salt, and Italian seasoning, and roasted them at 450 for 25-30 minutes. They were delicious.

Sidebar: the Michaelmas association with blackberries is the bizarre folklore bit that I mentioned above. Lore has it that when the devil was hurled out of heaven down to earth, he landed in a blackberry bush and either trampled or urinated on the berries, depending on who you ask about this story. Given that they are supposedly either squashed or gross, adherents to this story consider September 29th to be the last day blackberries can be harvested. Please note: this is not even remotely biblical and it actually made me laugh. Perhaps I’m a Michaelmas heathen.

After Elise got up from her quiet time, I sent her out with my mom to collect the asters (and goldenrod) for our supper bouquet while I cooked. Asters are one of the latest-blooming flowers of late summer/early fall, and given their alternate name, they found their way into Michaelmas tradition as well. Elise had a blast and she and my mom collected quite the lovely spray, even if I tend to think asters and even goldenrod look a tad bit weedy. Now they’re weedy and festive.

I finished cooking, and we sat down to the table. Before eating, we took a break from our standard ad hoc pre-dinner prayers and instead read the collect for Saint Michael and All Angels from the Book of Common Prayer: “O everlasting God, who hast ordained and constituted the ministries of angels and men in a wonderful order: Mercifully grant that, as they holy angels always serve and worship thee in heaven, so by thy appointment they may help and defend us on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

And then we feasted.

It was delicious, and we followed it up with apple crisp and chocolate, because no meal is complete without dessert, in my humble opinion. Even (especially?) when it isn’t blackberry pie.

We finished our evening with a rousing rendition of O Ye Immortal Throng, thanks to our resident pro pianist who expertly accompanied our singing. I took zero pictures of that because I was too busy reading the words on the page of the single hymnal that we were all crowded around, which felt more important than photography at the time.

All in all, we decided it should be an annual thing. Throughout the last several months I’ve felt a strong pull toward pursuing a deeper faith, and having these types of celebrations as milestones throughout the year is a helpful reminder to look to God as the source of all goodness, and particularly this year, hope during trial. Bring on All Saints’ Day, Candlemas, Epiphany…we’ll celebrate them all.

Kicking Off the Year with an Actual Bang

2019 started with a rather unusual string of events that I felt should be documented. Although to give the recap full justice, I should really start with last night. Elise went to bed at her normal hour, but instead of lying down and going to sleep as she normally does, she wasn’t having it and seemed quite distressed. After an hour and fifteen minutes of consoling, lying next to her crib on the floor, sending Chaz in to do a round of consoling, a dose of Tylenol for what we ultimately decided was teething pain, nursing, and replacing her in her bed, she finally went to sleep around 10:20. “How unexpected,” I thought, and headed to bed myself after finishing my Best of 2018 list.

She woke up 3.5 hours after I went to bed, and then proceeded to wake twice more before rising for the day at 7:00. I decided to keep a positive/negative tally for the day, and this counted as one point on the negative side.

Fortunately, Chaz had the day off today and since he was able to sleep through her night wakings and had gone to bed an hour earlier than I had, he hung out with Elise in the morning and I was able to get an extra hour of sleep. Hooray! Negative score: 1. Positive Score: 1. We’re tied!

Next, we decided to get some breakfast at a local restaurant. Thanks to her not so restful night, Elise was a little less content than usual to merely sit and eat, so we kept our breakfast a tad shorter than we might have otherwise. Nevertheless, it was scrumptious, so I gave this whole outing both one negative and one positive point. We’re still tied! 2 to 2.

After stuffing our faces with pancakes, both Chaz and I did a workout. I like to think that I consumed no more than 173 calories in my full stack of pancakes + syrup and side of bacon this morning, because that would mean that my workout completely canceled out breakfast. Don’t burst my bubble with facts here. #science. The fact that we did a workout at all was definitely a point on the positive side.

After a rather uneventful lunch for Elise, I put her down for a nap. Naps are good! We love naps! Another point on the positive side! However, she woke up halfway through. Another negative point. If you’re keeping track, we’re currently at 4 to 3. But by some strange magic, I actually got her back to sleep in her bed, and she slept for another hour. Positive point!

After she woke up, we decided it was time to take down the Christmas decorations and pack them in the box until next year. In past years, putting Christmas stuff away has felt rather sad, but not this year. This year it felt like a fresh start, and it was nice to have the extra space in our living room and at the top of the stairs, which is where we keep the chair that normally sits where the Christmas tree goes. Fresh starts! Extra space! Clean house! Another positive point!

We also decided it was high time to replace the dead lightbulb in one of our sconces by our front door. It had been out for probably 18 months, so we took care of that, though it turned out to be a rather frustrating exercise since the fixture disassembled itself while we changed the bulb. Eventually, it was done. Bulb replacement, +1. High frustration level: -1. We’re at 7 to 4.

Since we were on a roll on the home improvement front, we decided to also fix the bookshelf at the top of our stairs that had self destructed and dumped its shelves about a week prior. The bookshelf was always a bit precarious, so the fact that the shelves had fallen wasn’t too surprising.

We removed all the books from the remaining perilous shelves, although left some on the center shelf, which was part of the apparatus securing both upright sides to each other. Then we braced the sides together at the bottom and determined that we needed a screw on either side to ensure that the same issue wouldn’t happen again going forward. I got the drill, screwed in the screw, and was finishing was just finishing the final tightening when I heard a gigantic crack above my head.

I shut my eyes and leaned away from the bookshelf as the previously-firmly-attached center shelf gave way, dumping every musical score, Norton Anthology of Western Music volume, French dictionary, Conversational Solfege Teacher’s Manual binder, and rogue CD set on to the floor with an unholy crash. Did I see my life flash before my eyes? Maybe. Elise, who was standing a safe distance away to observe the operation, immediately started crying. Chaz, who was policing the Safe Distance range, did not.

Negative TWO POINTS.

However, as previously the stated, the bookshelf had always been precarious, and so I will give the positive team one additional point: we no longer have to worry about the possibility of the bookshelf collapsing at a random time and harming a toddler. Specifically our toddler. Safety wins the day!

We declared defeat on the bookshelf repair project, made ourselves dinner, and then picked up the pieces before Elise went to bed. I’m happy to report that she went to sleep as normal, without close to two hours of distress. We’ll give that a positive point for good measure.

If you’ve kept track, the positives beat the negatives 9 to 6, and if that’s how the rest of the year shakes out, I’ll be happy at the end of it. Cheers!

O Christmas Tree...

I think Christmas just got infinitely more exciting. I mean, Christmas has always been exciting, but with a baby, it became even more so. I'm not sure which is better: being a kid at Christmas or having a kid at Christmas. Perhaps we'll never know. Or at least I'll know after a few Christmases with a kid are under my belt.

Needless to say, I'm pretty pumped about this coming Christmas, and so we got started with the Christmas decorations a little earlier than usual this year, beginning with the Christmas tree.

In a perfect world, we'd go to the tree farm and cut down our own tree. I have such great memories of doing that for years as a kid and I'd love to pass that down, but it turns out that somehow cutting down our own is significantly MORE expensive than buying a pre-cut one. Someone explain that to me, please. Someone has to do all the labor of cutting, moving, arranging, selling, and attaching the trees to cars, but it's $20 less expensive than me going to the farm, sawing, transporting, and attaching everything on my own?

I digress.

Long story short, we got Elise's first Christmas tree at the local garden supply place down the road, but as far as pre-cut trees go, they had a really good selection and it was still fun. 

We headed to the lot on Saturday afternoon and perused the various tree options. There were several good ones! 

Our living room has limited options for tree placement, so we knew we wanted something not too tall and not too wide, but not too short and not too skinny. Basically, it had to be just right. Fortunately, we found the perfect one within a few minutes and then we made sure that Elise approved. 

When we couldn't get her attention to take a picture, we knew that was it. And so we played it like the millennials that we are and took a family selfie, then paid for our tree and got it on top of the car. 

As one does with Christmas trees, we brought it home, set it up, and filled it with decorations while Christmas music played in the background. Midway through we made breakfast for dinner, and then finished it up after we ate. 

We tried to take one more picture along the way, but it's a little tough while baby-wrangling and this is pretty much what we got:

And finally, because Christmas with a baby is magical, I took a few photos while she played with some lights to round out the evening. 

Since Advent starts later this year, we have an extra week to enjoy the season. We're celebrating at our house this year for the first time, and I'm quite looking forward to slowing down, savoring the preparations, the decorations, and the holiness in which these weeks are steeped. And I can't wait to watch Elise take it all in for the first time, since there's something especially lovely about introducing holidays to someone who's already filled with wonder over the regular day to day life. May we all anticipate Jesus's birth with such childlike amazement. 

What We've Been Up To...

Well, we flew to Washington...which unfortunately turned into an experiment on blog abandonment. Instead of blogging, I've done a lot of the following:

A) Eating. Pretty sure I'm going to be a few pounds heavier upon my return to MA. There's just so much good food! Teriyaki restaurants, pizza places, burger joints, fro yo...you name it, and we've eaten it and enjoyed every last darn bite.

B) Shopping. We waited to get Christmas gifts for the family members out here until we arrived since we didn't want to haul it all in our suitcases, and since there are many family members, we've been in more malls than you can count.

C) Exploring. Washington is the coolest, I tell you. Do you want to see water? Ok...look out the back door. Mountains? Yep...look out the same door. We decided that view wasn't quite enough, so we went on a drive through a mountain pass on a day when there wasn't a massive snowstorm, and it was well worth it. 

D) Beer-tasting. Ok...this is admittedly not me. But I appreciate it in spirit. Does that count? One day I hope I grow to like it, but not this trip. 

E) Coffee-shopping. There are SO MANY COFFEE SHOPS(!) out here! Why is this not a thing in Boston? They're comforting and friendly and they have tasty things. Who wouldn't like that type of thing?

I started laughing after the second picture...

F) Crafting. Sorta. We painted pottery, because the town we're in had a place that coupled pottery painting with a coffee shop. Brilliant.

G) STAR WARS.

So far...that's it. Considering we still have three days though, I'm sure there will be more to come!

Thanksgiving 2015

This year for Thanksgiving, we stayed at home. My family came from various parts of New England and so our house was the gathering place. It was wonderful. Since as far back as the beginning of college going-on-nine years ago, I haven't had a holiday that didn't involve traveling. What a gift it was to really be able to relax without needing to pack up and drive or fly as part of the time off! And so to my family I say thank you for coming to us and helping us have a wonderfully laid back Thanksgiving. 

We planned our Thanksgiving feast for later in the afternoon, which gave us time to go for a walk that morning. It was a beautiful day and not too cold - perfect fall walking weather.

At the end of the trail we found a camp (closed for the winter) and a small pond, which is good to know for whenever warmer weather rears its head again.

And with that, we stopped, took a couple pictures, and then headed back to the kitchen.

Let me just add a note here and say that I don't know how chefs do it day after day. I cooked the most food I have ever cooked in a single day, but that's something they do on the daily, so...props to you, chefs of the world. 

Our menu included turkey (of course), gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce (from a can), rolls (from Whole Foods), and two kinds of pies. I made the chocolate cream pie, but Costco made the apple pie and it was glorious. Never underestimate the glories of Costco.

And when it was all finished at 5pm, we sat down and ate. 

Finally, the food was eaten, the leftovers were put away, the dishes were washed, and the counters were wiped down. Logically, the next step was the pie, which may have been the crowning victory of the whole endeavor.

And because pie...I think we'll leave it with that. Happy Cyber Monday, y'all!