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.