The 2008 Christmas Holidays

Here are a few glimpses of our Christmastime celebration 2008. We decided to dine out at JoAn's Japanese restaurant on Christmas eve, then we invited my sister and her family to join us Christmas day for a casual buffet featuring the Christmas ham and '3 day potatoes' (a Lammers family favorite party dish) after we spent the morning opening presents and enjoying some holiday fun.

A few of these photos are from our little brunch party with the nieces before the Nutcracker Ballet at the Aronoff Center earlier in December. We thoroughly enjoyed our 2008 holiday season with family and friends.

Celebration of Twelfth Night January 6

I think I mentioned elsewhere that we are trying to create new rituals and traditions in our family this year to strengthen bonds and deepen our understanding of our heritage. So we got out the calendar and made a list of Feast Days of the Saints we love and also made notes on some of the secular holidays that might be fun to celebrate.

The 'Feast of the Epiphany', as it is known in many Christian calendars, or 'Three Kings Day' or 'Twelfth Night', is celebrated January 5th and 6th, or on the Sunday closest to those dates, in many countries. Baking a King Cake or Gallette de Roi, making crowns and readings about the revelation and visit of the Magi to the Christ Child in the Stable are traditional ways to celebrate and we tried to do that, too. We also made 3 Kings Puppets, which are another traditional activity for the feast day.

Here is a photo of our little niece holding her King Cake wrapped in a box ready for her to take home. We baked our cakes from a sweet yeast dough with an almond filling and decorated them with red cherries (rubies), icing and candles on the crown. Often times a little baby figurine or some other novelty like an almond or coin is baked into the cake (which, alas, we forgot to do!) and the person who receives the figurine is treated as the 'king' for the day.

Celebrate the Feast of Saint Nicholas December 5/6

Images from The Saint Nicholas Center Collection:

http://www.stnicholascenter.org/Brix?pageID=23

Saint Nicholas Day is fast approaching December 6. I almost missed it, again this year, despite my resolve to commemorate the feast in some way after becoming entranced by the beautiful Saint Nicholas Center website.