Good morning! It’s the Feast Day of Saint Nicholas. We were blessed to wake up this morning to find little gifts in our polished shoes.

A pretty little blank book and pen set, an orange, some chocolates, and a honey stick. Small things can inspire big delight.

It’s also the second Sunday of Advent, and we traditionally get our Yule tree on this day. We might be able to fit that in between Lucas’s basketball game and his Advent Spiral event tonight. We’ll see. I’m definitely feeling the urge to decorate for the holidays, and so far haven’t had time.

We’re wishing you a merry day, whatever you’re doing today. May you enjoy a moment of giving, a moment of gratitude, a moment of satisfying work, a moment of joy, and a moment of rest.

I am sometimes a late bloomer, or adopter, or whatever. Advent has arrived, but half of us were sick, so, we’re … um … easing into it. We will catch up. We will slowly begin to set up for Christmas.

Do you ever find your energy for festivals and family celebrations waning? I do, sometimes. This time of year can be so overwhelming. I try to remember that my To-Do list only exists in my mind—no one else can see it. No one’s judging me when I don’t get to things I intend to do. No one knows but me. So I try to set my intentions, make my priorities clear to myself, and then let the rest go. If it happens, great! If it doesn’t, that’s OK too. As important as rhythm is, balance and sanity are just as necessary in family life. We’re only human.

One of the things that I find to be a little difficult these days is preserving the festivals for my younger son, while my older son ages past them. Not that Lucas is done with Christmas or Halloween, or really anything with treats, but he’s getting a little blasé about the stories and myths surrounding our holidays. We work hard to infuse beauty and joy and wonder into our home and family life. And keeping the magic alive for Asher is important to me. But children grow—out of some things and into others—and that’s as it should be. As a tween, Lucas is sometimes a bit lukewarm about things, and that attitude can affect my ebullient, sanguine 7-year-old, who is living into these festivals with his whole self.

There we are.

St. Nicholas’s Day is upon us (tomorrow, Saturday, December 6). We talked about St. Nicholas at breakfast this morning. Asher had lots to say because he’s been hearing stories about the Bishop of Myrna at school. He is excited for St. Nicholas to come! And he remembered that St. Nicholas brings yummy oranges. I’m sure something exciting is happening today at school. St. Nicholas and Rupert have visited the classes at school before. We’ll polish our shoes tonight, and see if any small goodies come for tomorrow morning. Simple and small is best. I’ve spiffed up my St. Nicholas nature table doll, who is a few years old now. He’s looking pretty dapper again, ready to bring goodies to the world’s children and to herald the coming of the Winter Sun King.

In honor of St. Nicholas’s Day, Eileen and I are having a one-day sale on our Advent and St. Nicholas Festival E-Book today only (December 5)! It’s available for half price ($9.99) at http://www.littleacornlearning.com.

The e-book offers poems, stories, songs, crafts, and many special ways that families, schools, or childcare professionals can celebrate a simple, peaceful month of December. We wrote this e-book with the hope we might help people create thoughtful, heartfelt holidays, with less frenzied commercialism and more togetherness time.

This mosaic is a peek at what’s in our Advent and St. Nicholas Festival E-Book. Many thanks for reading this far, and for spreading the word to anyone who might be interested in our offering. And whatever you do this month to celebrate whichever holidays you celebrate, do it with simplicity, love, and joy. Blessings of the season on you and your loved ones!

This year, the shortest day of the year comes on a Saturday, so I’m dreaming of a family celebration. Something simple. A special sunny meal. Some art perhaps. A fire in the fireplace. Although we celebrate Christmas in our home, I also have a need for a modest, private, no-fuss solstice night on our terms.

I’m thinking avgolemono soup.

I’m thinking salad with persimmons, mandarins, apples, and pomegranate seeds, with a touch of orange blossom water—but not on Asher’s portion because he thinks it’s gross.

I’m thinking a sunny, honey cake.

I’m thinking of a simple craft we can do together.

We have a second important reason to celebrate the winter solstice. It is the second anniversary of this sweet fellow being in our lives. I realize it might be confusing: My dog is named Solstice because he came to us on the winter solstice two years ago. He was and is the best solstice present ever given to any four people ever.

This week I had Asher home sick for three days. It was a sweet kind of time together, as it forced me to slow down and step away from my work. We read lots of books together (“Read me more about castles, Mama”) and did some Christmas preparations that otherwise probably wouldn’t have been done. For example, I made a long evergreen garland for the eave at my front door.

It’s quite long and pretty, made of fir branches, plus some box, redwood, lemon leaf, and bay accents, and features some simple homemade ornaments: wooden stars, toadstools, spirals. It’s very festive for Yule.

We made the pretty pentacle at the top with Virginia creeper vines that Asher cut and I wove into a wreath. We accented its points with bay leaves polished with a touch of olive oil.

We made wooden star ornaments for teacher gifts and painted them “emperor gold.”

Asher played at being a Sun Warrior. He came up with this outfit on his own, and then asked me to do a photo shoot while he jumped and ran around the backyard with a sword and a “spear.” My little Apollo. We got some great action shots. (Why is it that kids are most sick at night and the morning, when it’s time to go to school, but not very sick at all in the middle of the day?)

We have observed Advent, and Asher has gradually added more and more stone, plant, and animal items to our Advent wreath. (He snuck a Bob the Builder doll in there too.)

We’ve watched Mother Mary progress along her sky path of stars on her way to Christmas Day.

I finally found a way to use some gold colored wire that I salvaged from a school fundraiser auction event several years ago. (Why do I keep this stuff for years? Oh, because occasionally I actually DO something with it.) Anyway, it’s very soft, pliable stuff and I made some sun ornaments from it. They’re not fancy, but are shiny and pretty.

So, that’s what’s going on as we enter into this holy week. Whatever holiday you observe, I hope you can gather your family together, either in body or in spirit, and take some time to reflect on what’s most important to you. This moment in our solar year is perfect for listening to your quietest, innermost voice. What is yearning to be born in this moment of stillness? What spark is born in the darkness?

“In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.” —Albert Camus

Well, here it is, Advent already. I’m not too great at marketing, but this is to let you know that my co-author Eileen and I are having a sale on our Advent and St. Nicholas Festival E-Book until December 7,2013. The sale price is $9.99—half off the regular price of $19.99.

It offers poems, stories, songs, crafts, and many special ways that families, schools, or childcare professionals can celebrate the whole month of December with children.

A measured, calm approach to the winter holidays gives children time to dream, live into the stories of their faith and the season, and count the days of Advent. Children can savor the passing of time with peaceful, delicious anticipation and gentle, useful activity, rather than experience the holiday as a single, frenzied, blowout day that is over all too soon. A peaceful Advent full of simple pleasures and togetherness is what they’ll remember later, not the package-ripping and specific, expensive gifts. We wrote this e-book with the intent of helping families create a thoughtful, heartfelt approach to the holidays, with less rushing commercialism and more togetherness time.

This mosaic is a peek at what’s in our Advent and St. Nicholas Festival E-Book. Click on the title  or any of these photos to be taken to the full description of the e-book contents and place to buy it, on the Little Acorn Learning store. Many thanks for reading this far, and for spreading the word to anyone who might be interested in our offering.

Blessings of the season on you and your loved ones!

We are celebrating the Feast of Saint Nicholas in small ways. I’m making a honey cake to eat after dinner tonight and yesterday, on the eve of St. Nicholas’s birthday, the children polished their boots and set them out to see if perhaps some treats might appear there. Indeed, Lucas and Asher did receive some traditional Saint Nicholas goodies this morning: oranges, chocolates, and walnuts.

This morning Daddy said, “Go look in your boots.” Asher was incredulous. “Go look in my boots?!” The poor kid teared up when he saw the orange in his red rain boots. He’s not a big fan of oranges. But when he found the chocolate he cheered right up again and gobbled some down. (Mmmm … chocolate at 7:04 a.m.!) Lucas opted to have his orange in his lunch box today.

I made this needle-felted Saint Nicholas to display for the holiday. He’s presently on our kitchen table with Sturdylegs the Donkey.

Kind old man, St. Nicholas dear,
Come to our house this year.
Here’s some straw and here’s some hay
For your little donkey gray.

Pray put something in my shoe,
I’ve been good the whole year through,
Kind old man, St. Nicholas dear,
Come to our house this year.
(from Germany, and the Winter book from Wynstones Press)

We are also reading Christine Natale’s St. Nicholas stories, which are found on this Saint Nicholas Center website along with lots and lots of Saint Nicholas resources and recipes. I admit I’m editing the stories a bit to make them suit our family. I really do like the examples of Nicholas doing good deeds as a boy; I think Natale has done a great job of relating the concept of generosity in a way that children can easily understand.

Lucas’s Saint Nicholas drawing from last year in second grade.

It is said that Saint Nicholas is the children’s saint because he rewards their goodness (and his buddy, Rupert/Krampus/Black Peter punishes bad children who don’t learn their lessons or obey their parents). Celebrating Nicholas’s giving spirit is good preparation for Christmas, which is why they call him the Advent saint. This celebration wasn’t part of Ian’s or my childhood (funny, considering our Austrian roots), so we are feeling our way into it and enjoying the parts we want.

There is a beautiful children’s picture book by Demi, The Legend of Saint Nicholas, published in 2003. Demi’s marvelous, gilded illustrations present Nicholas’s life and many miracles, and explain how he came to be the patron saint of so many groups. (There is one story I’m not at all fond of, however. I would recommend that parents read this book first, and then decide whether to present it to their children.)

Do you celebrate this day? How do you celebrate?

It’s so easy to fall in love with nature in the springtime. I do every year. I know not everybody is into Earth Day and I know that the problems that face us as caretakers of this planet are vast—sometimes too grim to contemplate. We all make choices every day and I know I do not always make the best ones. And yet I think the first step to solving some of these massive issues is to instill in our children a love of this amazing world we live in, to cultivate a sense of reverence for the nature that is all around us.

Teaching children to appreciate nature is really not necessary; they already love it, wonder at it, learn from it. Children love animals, rocks, sticks, butterflies, flowers. Children need to splash in puddles, dig in the earth, and run their hands across the bark of a tree. They do this without our prompting, as long as we allow them to, discovering all along, unearthing small mysteries and miracles every day.

There is a wealth of children’s books about the earth. More are being published every day and your local bookstore or online retailer is sure to have a display or special on such books in honor of Earth Day. Some have a clear, scientific slant and some have a cute, cuddly animal slant. Honestly, there are so many that no single family could possibly explore them all!

What is a trifle harder to find are books with a reverent stance, that are poetic or provide a global ecological stance without being ALARMING. Here are a few we enjoy:

Clockwise:

Frank Ash’s The Earth and I — A simple, rainbow-hued story of a boy who loves the earth and cares for her; perfect for preschoolers.

Graeme Base’s Uno’s Garden — A story of people moving into an unspoiled Eden and ruining it, and then the gradual return of the marvelous creatures and plants that lived there. Eventually they achieve balance with nature. It is also a mathematics story. Asher loves the creatures and the challenge of finding the Snortlepig. Lucas likes the pictures and the math.

Nancy Luenn’s Mother Earth — A beautiful and poetic personifcation of the earth, with a message that we should enjoy all that the earth has to offer and give back to her, too. I found this at the library and then scoured the Internet to find a copy for our home. I think it may be out of print, but you can still find copies.

Linda Glaser’s Our Big Home: An Earth Poem — Illustrated by one of my favorite illustrators, Elisa Kleven, this book is intricate and stunning: “We all live here. People, ants, elephants, trees, lizards, lichen, turtles, bees. We all share the same big home.”

Tony Johnston’s The Whole Green World — Also illustrated by Kleven. A girl counts her many blessings: shoes, a dog, a stick, a sack of seeds, a watering can, the sun, birds, ladybugs and ants, breezes, cake, a book, the moon, flowers and trees.

From Mother Earth.

From Our Big Home: An Earth Poem.

Shari Halpern’s My River — A used bookstore find published by Scholastic. Perfect for little ones. It shows how the river belongs to all creatures equally.

Earthways: Simple Environmental Activities for Young Children — This book is a good investment and one I’m sure we’ll keep for many years.

Joseph Bruchac’s Between Earth & Sky: Legends of Native American Sacred Places — For slightly older kids, this book tells of earth legends from various native peoples. The oil painting illustrations are lovely.

Nature Crafts for Kids — This is where I first saw the Easter eggs with the negative prints of leaves and flowers. Make a barometer, a birdbath, pressed flowers, candied violets, a sundial, baskets, evergreen garlands, and much more. Another keeper.

If you like what you see here and choose to purchase one of these books for your family, click the links here—my family will be supported just a tad by your purchase.

What’s in your Earth Day book basket?

Last year, I managed to throw together a tiny Solstice celebration. At the last minute, I invited Theresa and Greg and Phoebe over for dinner. I decorated the table with a gold lamé and served only yellow foods (butternut squash soup, oranges, summer squashes cut into disks and sautéed, chicken with a lemon sauce, sparkling cider, and probably other stuff I don’t remember). We had a lovely, silly time, subtly worshipping the sun and its return.

Today I don’t have any such thing planned, but maybe I’ll go to the grocery store for some oranges or something.

Over the course of this month, we’ve been observing Advent, à la Waldorf schools and Anthroposophists rather than Catholics/Christians. The difference is slight, however. We have an Advent Wreath (a real evergreen wreath) and in the center we placed a Celtic-style candleholder that was a gift from Flonkbob (and Chilipantz?) many years ago. Although the candleholder is not a ring, per se, it features three outer candles with a place for one elevated candle in the center. It’s beautiful and works nicely as the symbolic equivalent of the four weeks leading up to Solstice/Christmas, with the fourth being the prominent one signifying the birth of the Sun/Christ. (The Advent wreath we had when I was growing up was a ring, but in the Catholic tradition, we used 3 purple candles and 1 pink candle signifying the climax. Pink/purple are the traditional colors of Advent in the church.) This year, I’ve stuffed it with golden beeswax candles made by lovely dakini_grl.

Each night, we’ve been reciting the following poem, which I believe is traditional for the Anthroposophists:

The first light of Advent,
It is the light of Stones,
Stones that live in crystals, seashells,
And our bones.

The second light of Advent
It is the light of plants,
Plants that reach up to the sun,
And in the breezes dance.

The third light of Advent,
It is the light of Beasts,
The light of hope that we may see
In greatest and in least

The fourth light of Advent,
It is the light of man,
The light of love, the light of thought,
To give and understand.

I like this verse because it’s earth- and human-centered. It’s pagan-sounding to me. But that pagan stuff isn’t quite so important to me as it used to be. I’ve become like Joseph Campbell in my old age. I’ve been meditating on the meaning of Christmas to me and how well I see the lines that connect this holiday with other, older holidays. My need to step apart and define myself as a pagan, as something entirely other than a Christian, is much diminished. I’m finding that this is making me really happy, and is allowing me to enjoy all the religiosity of the season more. Somehow there’s less of a reason to be uptight.

ASIDE:
At one point last year sometime, Ian’s mother expressed concern that Lucas must be educated about the Christian faith so that he can live in our God-fearing, Christian society.  I hardly fear that Lucas will somehow escape learning a basic knowledge of Christianity, just because we don’t define ourselves as Christians. She worried because we were attending the Unitarian Universalist Society services: “Do they even talk about Christ?!”

Anyway, we have been singing the Advent song that mentions the Christ child along with our candle-lighting ritual. Lucas’s face always lights up when we sing “Then comes the Christ child at the door.” I think that he is really captivated by the image of a child being the inspiration of the season.

The other morning, all by myself, I sat down on the couch in my living room with some Christmas carol sheet music and sang my wondering Christian heart out.