At our house, we’ve been making a concerted effort to wait to celebrate Christmas, until . . . about now.
It gives us at least a chance of keeping up with the kids’ enthusiasm for the whole twelve days. (Or however many days of Christmas you like.)
So, in case you’re looking for ideas to make your celebration last all the way to Epiphany, here’s what we’ll be doing:
I heard about some folks sending their Wise Men on adventures during Advent, as an alternative to Elf on the Shelf. Which is fine. But if I were being nit picky, I might say that I prefer to have my traditions be less reactionary and more historically accurate, and my understanding is that the Star of Bethlehem rose upon the birth of Christ, and that’s what they were following. (But wow, if you really want to confuse yourself, try to figure out some hard facts about the Wise Men!)
So, our Wise Men depart from their spot on the other side of the mantle from the Holy Family on the evening of Christmas. And they journey through the house for two years, because we’re real sticklers for accuracy around here. Just kidding. They journey for twelve days until the Epiphany, when they arrive at the Baby Jesus. And we have our Epiphany celebration.
Our outside Wise Men move across the yard and end up on the front porch. There they are on the right, creeping up . . .
These are awesome. Volume 8 is a collection of great old cartoons (some really old) starring Mickey, Pluto, Donald, and Chip and Dale. Volume 9 has The Small One, a very sweet telling of the backstory of the donkey that ends up carrying Mary to Bethlehem, Mickey’s Christmas Tree, and Mickey’s Christmas Carol.
It looks like these DVDs are hard to find, but most of the individual cartoons seem to be available on YouTube.
If you’d like to keep track of ALL the feasts of the Catholic liturgical year, I’ve created a wall calendar to help you do it!
It features the all the feasts and fasts of the Universal Calendar and then some, illustrated with images featuring the traditional Catholic monthly devotions. It’s an easy visual way to bring liturgical living into your home. You can keep track of the feasts and fasts and seasons of the Catholic year, and be reminded to focus your prayer on a different aspect of our faith each month.
As the Church year begins with December, so does this calendar. You get December 2017 through December 2018, thirteen months. Available for purchase here. Thanks!
