The Catholic liturgical year is full of feasts to celebrate. And Pinterest is full of ways to feel inferior about how you do (or do not) celebrate it. Even though the liturgical year has already begun, I thought I would share this while you are setting goals for the upcoming year. I’ve come up with a 5 step way to introduce liturgical year feasts & celebrations into even the busiest seasons of life.
1. Christmas & Easter
Evaluating your Christmas & Easter celebrations could easily be the easiest and hardest ways to bring the liturgical year into your home. For this year, come up with ONE thing you could do for each holiday to bring in more of your faith.
Maybe you decorate in liturgical colors or don’t decorate until just before Christmas. Or you could celebrate the Epiphany. Or do short Advent activities from a family devotions book.
For Easter, you could postpone your Easter Egg hunt so that you concentrate more on Easter. Or perhaps an Easter activity like Resurrection Rolls? Or maybe just include a religious item in their Easter basket.
2. Baptism Anniversary
I’ve written down the anniversaries of every child’s baptism and we celebrate their “church birthday.” Most years, it’s just dessert after dinner and a small religious gift item, but three times a year we celebrate the importance of our Baptisms. You could even say a special prayer for the family on that day.
3. Family Patron Saints
At Baptism, every child should have a patron saint. After they are born and named, I add each child’s patron saint’s feast day to our calendar. Again, it’s not a big celebration, but we read a little about their saint & have a little dessert — themed, if I have the time! Five times a year, we commemorate saints feast days.
4. Your Parish Patron
Does your parish have a patron saint? Ours is Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary and St. Isadore as our secondary patron. Our old parish was named for the Immaculate Conception. If there is a parish festival, go! If not, make your own celebration.
5. Pick a Monthly Saint or Feast Day
For those months where you do not already have a celebration (or 3), pick a patron saint to learn about. You can find the feast days for each month at Catholic.org. This could be as complex as a whole themed celebration complete with daily mass, or as simple as reading about the saint & saying a quick prayer for their intercession.
Bonus: Family Patron Saint
Have you ever gotten a patron saint for your family? Jen @ Conversion Diary has made a random saint generator. You could also use it to pick a saint for your family. Regularly ask him for his intercession & maybe even make an extra effort for his feast day. Or not, depending on your season of life :).
Each of these ideas is a personal but low output way to incorporate the richness of the liturgical year into your busy lives.
What do you do to make the Catholic faith a part of your family culture?
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Jen is a Catholic wife and mother to three little ones whose nose can usually be found buried in a book, learning once all the work is done. Or sometimes, even when it’s not! You can always find Jen blogging about the big 5 — God & Catholicism, taking care of yourself, serving your spouse and children and managing the home. She can be found blogging at Happy Little Homemaker and on most of the social media sites including Google+.
