Preparing Our Hearts for Christmas
A Chatty Inspiration Post
Blessed Feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos!
We are a few days into the fast now, and I thought I’d share a chatty post with some of the things our family does to help prepare our hearts during this season.
The first thing to note is that I’ve been playing this game for a while — I didn’t start out this active and organized when my oldest kids were little. So please don’t take my ideas as any kind of prescription. Over the years, certain things have stuck around, and now we have a little list of things that feel important to us. It’s also worth noting that I really love doing the Christmas season. Not everyone feels the same way, nor is there any “right” way to prepare and celebrate. I offer the following just in case you’re a little nebby, like me, and enjoy being inspired by the different ways people do things.
To start with, this year I remade our “prayer/fasting/almsgiving/learning” sheet (yes, it’s below if you’d like it). It’s pretty self-explanatory — at the beginning of both major fasting periods, we sit down as a family and talk about what we can each do in these four categories to observe the fast. The little ones draw pictures, the bigger kids write down specific intentions. It’s not super complicated or involved, but it definitely helps everyone get in the right frame of mind. Under the prayer heading, we include our personal prayers and also the extra services we plan on attending; under fasting, we talk about technology as well as food; under almsgiving, we typically plan to fill up a bag for Goodwill or the local food pantry; and under learning, we set a few season-specific goals for Morning Time. This year we are reading Welcoming the Christ Child by Elissa Bjeletich and focusing on learning Christmas carols, especially for my younger kids, so that they can be enthusiastic participants in next month’s caroling. We also enjoy selections from our substantial collection of Christmas picture books that only come out this time of year. We now have so many that we never get through all of them, though there are a few favorites that always make the top of the list, such as Christmas Day in the Morning by Pearl S. Buck (you can find a free audio version here), The Third Gift by Linda Sue Park, and Good King Wenceslas illustrated by Tim Ladwig. Instead of doing something specifically Christmas-themed this year, we will just continue our memory work from the fall: the whole family is working on memorizing We Pray by Daniel G. Opperwall.
I also remade a Nativity countdown for the little ones — 40 stars for 40 days. We’ll get the new candle wreath out and light the first candle this weekend, when we start putting up the decorations, rocking out to TSO. We usually split up decorating, doing half before Thanksgiving, and half after — we generally work together as a family, though the kids end up petering out before the task is totally done, which is fine. The outside lights and decorations get put up on the best-looking weather day of this week.
I haven’t hosted a large Thanksgiving gathering in recent years, though I have in the past. Instead, the teens will participate in serving a meal at a shelter, and I will make an early meal for our family plus a guest or two. Then I will spend the evening turning leftovers into “Thanksgiving casseroles” to freeze (easy recipe below).
We like to go to the Winter Lights Festival at the zoo with extended family around the week of Thanksgiving, both because it’s a great way to get in the mood to decorate and also because the weather seems to be most cooperative. If it’s too cold or rainy, it’s just not as much fun. We’ve done other lights displays in years past, but the zoo is our perennial favorite.
After we’re all in the mood and all the decorations are up, next up comes the feast of Saint Nicholas. We will go to Liturgy in the morning, and afterwards, when we get home, the kids get their stockings. I put in clementines and chocolate coins, of course, and then maybe something else little. Recurring favorites are special hot cocoa packets and spare ear buds.
A week after Saint Nicholas comes a new tradition for us — celebrating the feast of Saints Lucia and Herman with our parish. We will have a procession at Vespers, followed by a (fasting) cookie and apple cider social in the hall. The girls get to wear the red sashes and crowns, and the boys get to carry star staffs. Last year was our first year hosting this tradition as a parish, and it was a blast — the only reason we weren’t packed to the gills was that a local school concert had also been scheduled for the same evening. Also around mid-December, as mentioned, our parish spends a Saturday morning caroling together for some of our home-bound parishioners.
At this point, if we need to mix things up for Morning Time, I will frequently whip out Wendy Stevens’ Holiday Rhythm Cup Explorations and work on some Christmas ornament crafting — this year I found plans for re-purposing some of our Lego stash. If we hit a natural place to pause in any of our other subjects, we will stop there until after Theophany.
As long as everyone’s health is holding up, we always plan on attending Liturgy on both Christmas Eve morning and, of course, Christmas Day. None of our extended families are Orthodox, so we sprinkle in some other family get-togethers over the week surrounding the feast, though we are mindful to prioritize church services. We also strive to attend Liturgy on one of the days after Christmas, often visiting other parishes who hold services for different feast days. This doesn’t happen every year, however, because the truth is having small children (or just many children) often means unpredictable illness, especially after the intensity and excitement of the holiday.
A side note on illness: I am a big believer in practicing Christian charity by not spreading pathogens whenever possible. Having been in caregiving situations with immunocompromised parents and children, my rule of thumb is that we do not go to church if anyone has had a fever or vomiting/diarrhea within 72 hours, or if there are discernible sinus/bronchial secretions, particularly if they are any color other than clear. I would rather pray at home than pass along an illness that could potentially become an emergency for another family. In practicality, this means that we don’t get to do our full Winter Lent/Christmas season plans every year — but that’s okay. It helps us appreciate better the years when we aren’t ill, and gratitude for health is itself an important spiritual practice to teach the kids.
We treat the twelve days between Christmas and Theophany as the true holiday season. Since we’ve been avoiding junk food for forty days, this is when we do our baking and feasting and resting — for example, this year my teen daughter and I have plans to master a Bûche De Noël, and I am personally hoping it takes at least a few tries to get it right. I typically beg everyone to sing carols at the piano at least once, and we’ll squeeze in a few more Christmas books here and there. Some years we’ve taken extra trips to Christmas light displays or to visit more family, but mostly we just enjoy the time together.
Our holiday season comes to a close with the celebration of Theophany. Again, there are services on Theophany Eve as well as Theophany itself, and on the Sunday closest to the feast, our parish blesses the water at a local nature preserve. Only after this has concluded do we start to talk about taking decorations down — depending on when the New Year’s house blessing schedule is posted, some years we have left the decorations up for a few days until after the blessing.
Perhaps the most important part of our holiday rhythm, for us, is that it is sustainable. It’s different from the rest of the year, the many small celebrations help get us through the shortening days of the dark month of the Cold Moon, and above all, it doesn’t run us ragged. By the time everything has concluded in January, we’re ready for a new season. This is part of the reason I structure our year-round school terms into eight semesters: the term that runs from November to the end of the year is our holiday term, and the next one that begins the second week in January is our winter semester.
I’d love to hear your plans and traditions in the comments!
Easy Thanksgiving Casserole
I feel kind of silly even calling this a recipe, but not only does my family adore this, it is a quick and easy frozen casserole dinner that smells like heaven on a random gloomy day.
Mashed potatoes or potato filling
Turkey
Corn, green bean casserole
Carrots, sweet potatoes
Gravy
Prepared stuffing
Grease the bottom of an aluminum steam pan. Put down a base layer of mashed potatoes or filling, followed by a layer of turkey, followed by a mix of whatever leftover vegetables you have. Add gravy– more is better, because it soaks into everything on reheat. Finish up with a layer of stuffing for a crispy top.
Cover with aluminum foil or lid, then a layer of plastic wrap to protect from freezer burn. This will keep in the freezer for at least six months– I can’t promise longer, because ours never makes it that long! To reheat, thaw in the refrigerator for at least a day and bake, covered, at 350º until hot and bubbly. Take the cover off and bake an additional 10-15 minutes to crisp the top.