The 12 Days of Christmas

The Christmas season actually lasts from Christmas Day through Epiphany, on January 6. Here are some ways to continue to celebrate the Christmas season throughout these days:

- The 12 Days of Christmas Devotionals: Click for a lovely devotional for each day of Christmas and a special Epiphany devotional.

- The More Days the Merrier at US Catholic: Ways to celebrate holy days for each day of the 12 days of Christmas.

- View From the Pews has a wonderful 12 days of Christmas devotional; each day's gift presents/symbolizes a character virtue to make us more like Christ.

Of course, keep your decorations up, continue to play Christmas music & read Christmas stories. Set your three kings far from the nativity scene and move them a little closer each day until January 6.

You could start a tradition for the 12 days of Christmas. Each night, turn out all the lights except the Christmas tree, sit around it and sing carols or tell stories. Or bake one Christmasy goody each day, or do a Christmas craft each day.

How do you celebrate the 12 days of Christmas? Please share!

Christmas Does Not End on Christmas Day!

All of the grandkids last Christmas.

For Catholics, the season leading up to Christmas Day is Advent, preparing to receive Jesus - in celebration of his actual birth, in our hearts today, and when he returns. The Christmas season (the 12 days of Christmas) starts on Christmas Day and lasts until Epiphany, January 6 (some consider it to last until the baptism of Jesus, which is the Sunday after Epiphany).

Catholic Culture has a special 12 Days of Christmas section for families, where each day there is a prayer and activity.

Find out what each symbol in the song The 12 Days of Christmas (which was created when Christianity had to be celebrated in secrecy) means at Catholic Mom.

Christmas holy days:

December 26: St Stephen

December 27: St John the Evangelist

December 28: the Holy Innocents

Sunday after Christmas: Feast of the Holy Family

January 4: St Elizabeth Ann Seton

January 6: Epiphany, aka Kings Day

Sunday after Epiphany: Baptism of our Lord

Celebrate the Feast of Epiphany:

Flickr/ Jim Forest

There is a custom on Epiphany, of blessing the home on that day, since the kings visited the home of the holy family. Traditionally, after the home blessings, the following is written in chalk on the back door:

20+G+M+B+11

It is the year split on the ends to enclose the three initials of the kings, Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar.

Celebrate Carnival:

Source

We are a New Orleans family and so I will enjoy taking you through the beginning months of the year with us, as we celebrate with traditional customs of Catholic (and non-Catholic, because everyone joins in!) New Orleans. 

We call Epiphany Kings' Day and celebrate with a party where we share "king cake". It is a sweet cinnamon bread, formed in a ring (for the never-ending God) and frosted in Mardi Gras colors of purple (for justice), green (for faith), and gold (for power). We hide a plastic baby Jesus in the cake and the person who "finds" the baby has to buy or make the next king cake. This continues each weekend for Carnival season, which lasts from Kings Day to "Fat Tuesday", the day before Ash Wednesday.

Carnival season comes from France, and started as eating (the last eggs, milk, cheese, sweets, and meat in the house), drinking, and being merry before the 40 days of Lent begins. It made its way to New Orleans with Iberville and now includes fancy balls, fun parades, and of course king cake parties.

Christmas Link-up:

Xhonane at Familia Catolica has a Christmas link-up to encourage families to celebrate the entire Christmas season (through Epiphany) rather than just on Christmas Day. Check out her wonderful site full of ideas (it has a translator if you don't speak Spanish), and check out the link-up for more websites with ideas for continuing the celebration!

God Bless,

Interesting Christmas Finds Around the Web

1. Jolanthe shares a list of educational Christmas printables from around the web over at Homeschool Creations.

2. Emily at Chatting at the Sky has a must-read article called The Most Unwelcome Guest at Christmas. I had tears in my eyes and I actually felt lighter as I realized that I, too, can offer grace . . . to myself.

3. On a lighter note, there is a site where 422 Bible stories are told in legos! Here is the link to the Christmas story. You may want to look through it first. I read it with my boys, who loved it, but when the angel came to Mary she asked how she could be pregnant without having sex with a man. Also when Herod has the boys killed, the picture has decapitated tots. But I like the idea and I think for the most part it is okay. We read Lazarus, Jesus gets tempted in the desert, and Jesus is baptized as well.

5 Ideas for Christmas Food Fun

In case you missed me saying it before, I love Evernote! You know how you cut out recipes and ideas from magazines and file them away in file folders or sections of a binder? Well I do. So this is basically doing that but online! As your browse around the web, you can highlight something you like - text, photo, even audio or video -  and "clip" it. It automatically goes to your Evernote account and you can file it under any tag you like. It is fab-u-lous!

Anyway, I thought I'd share with you what's in my fun Christmas food folder:

1. Snowman powdered donuts from Creative Gift & Party Ideas.

2. This idea from Better Homes & Gardens is for a large glass bowl to use as a punch bowl. But I say go buy several small glass fishbowls from the dollar store, wash them, then paint the face on the inside of them with melted chocolates, fill with eggnog, and give one to each kid as a drinking glass!

3. I love finding real food made into fun holiday-themed items, because as cute as you can make things out of goodies, its too much junk! This came from The Party Blueprints Blog. These ladies are fabulous and the blog is a must-see. They have been on television and have their own book out. Click for the recipes/instructions for these appetizers.

4. Another non-dessert holiday-themed food! Christmas pizza! Check out Delia Creates for the recipe/how-to. She uses white sauce, made with roux, whipping cream, and garlic. There you have it folks; the woman has stolen my heart right there. Delia has great recipes & ideas, mesmerizing photographs, and free printables to go with her ideas! Check her out when you get a chance.

5. I filed away these gorgeous poinsettia cookies from Skip to My Lou because they are so beautiful. But I never went back to them. Well while I was out Christmas shopping, I stopped in at our local chef store and they had a whole wall of individual cookie cutters. Lo and behold, at the very top were several types of poinsettia cookie cutters! I instantly remembered these cookies I had put into Evernote! Click for the recipe and step-by-step how-to.

Happy Cooking!

Snowman Truffles

These snowman truffles were really fun to make with the kids. They are extremely rich, so serve just one and include a big glass of milk to wash it down! The hats didn't turn out great for me; I think I didn't thin the chocolate enough. But we had a blast and I think they are so cute.

First I made cookie dough truffles because they are super easy and delicious. Simply blend together 1/2 cup softened butter and 3/4 cup brown sugar in a medium mixing bowl, using an electric mixer. Beat until blended & smooth. Then add 2 cups of flour and 1 can of condensed milk. Beat again until blended & smooth. Form into balls and put into the fridge to firm up. I used a scooper so they would all be about the same size. 

While the dough is in the fridge, melt a bag of chocolate chips with a spoonful of shortening. Coat large marshmallows and put on a Silpat mat or waxed paper to harden. Dip thin wafer cookies and put them to harden as well. I think I needed to make the chocolate thinner with more shortening so it would drip off, leaving a thin, smooth layer. Instead my chocolate was apparently too thick because it ended up splotchy. If you don't have thin wafer cookies you could also simply use a spoon and pour circles of the melted chocolate onto the waxed paper and let them harden. Oh, those weird extra shapes in the photo? I had too much chocolate so I made chocolate-covered cherry clusters with the rest!

While the chocolate hat pieces hardened I dipped the cookie dough balls in melted white chocolate with shortening in it. This came out a lot smoother. Hey, you could use donut holes if you don't want to make the balls!

"Paste" the hat tops & bottoms together to make snowman hats with some melted chocolate. While that hardens, make faces on the snowman balls with black gel icing. I had some Halloween sprinkles and picked out the orange ones and used the black gel to "glue" the noses on.

"Paste" the hats onto the snowman balls with melted chocolate. This worked for most of my snowmen, but on a few I had to take a sharp knife and kind of shave off the top of the snowman head to make it flatter so the hat would stay on.

5 Homemade Gifts for the Holidays

Personalized Anthropology-like mugs with hot cocoa mix inside. Find out how to make these at the fabulous Design Mom. She is doing a neat Christmas gift guide series right now.

Isn't this scarf so adorable! Find out how to make it using a stuffed animal at A Girl and A Glue Gun.

I think this would make such a great present for a grandparent! Find instructions from Mandy over at Sugar Bee Craft Edition. She's got lots of other handmade gift ideas as well.

What a unique idea! You can make a personalized coloring book using your own photos and the tutorial at Merriment Design.

I loved all of the ideas for the fall single-use soaps, so was so happy to find winter ones. Find out how to make these at Suzy's Artsy Crafty Sitcom.

Feel free to leave links to your own homemade gift ideas and finds in the comments!

Advent Calendar Activity

Advent Calendar

There is a fabulous website, called Reflections of Light, that is filled with Advent activities. But the site is in Spanish! I contacted the owner and am very happy to say that I was granted permission to translate some activities and offer them to you here.

So if you speak Spanish, then visit and enjoy the site. Otherwise, here is the first activity, which is a great Advent calendar. Its not too late, just do a few days at once to get started! The tree has a snippet from the story of Jesus in each square and each day you glue the matching picture onto it!

I miss one big thing about Typepad: they let you upload your files into your acct. So I could just give you a direct link to my file and viola - it's yours. But not here. So I have put the file into Scribd.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/44613184

Oriental Trading Fun & Faith

Yesterday I received an Oriental Trading Fun & Faith catalog in the mail. Do you know about Oriental Trading? They offer craft supplies and holiday/party supplies on the cheap. 

As you can see on the holiday calendar, I will be making cookies on the third and having a kids' cookie-decorating party on the fourth. The whole point was just a fun holiday party for the kids and their friends. But as I was flipping through Oriental Trading, I got an even better idea! 

Suppose I extend the party quite a bit. Tell the Christmas story to the kids while they are decorating their cookies, maybe make a Christian Christmas craft or two. End with eating a few of the goodies while we watch a Christian Christmas movie. We happen to live in a neighborhood where I think this could really be beneficial. Many of the children that visit our home have no idea who Jesus is at all. I will let parents know first, of course, but I don't think anyone will mind. Just one little way our family can evangelize a bit in a positive, fun way.

Oriental Trading doesn't allow anyone to use their photos in any way, which is very unfortunate since I am basically promoting them here, but here is what I have found:

Nativity sticker Advent calendars to give the kids to take home, like a party favor. They are $9.99 for a dozen of them.

A huge "Happy Birthday" Jesus banner for just $5.99.

Plastic "Happy Birthday Jesus" cups to drink out of that they can also bring home for $5.99 for a dozen.

There are also lots of crafts to choose from, and I haven't picked yet. 

Any suggestions for the movie? And is there a way for your family to spread the good news this holiday season?

Blessings,