As we get nearer to Christmas I realize there are some problems with living Florida. What I mean is in Ohio it was always very easy to tell when it was getting close to Christmas because, well, it would start to snow. Now I have to wait for the radio to start playing Christmas music to know when it’s nearing Christmas, which can get kinda tricky. I guess I could use a calendar, but really where’s the fun in that?
Category: Family
All things family related go here (so pretty much everything).
A Holiday of Light
Happy Santa Lucia day! The 13th of December is widely celebrated in Sweden as the feast of the early Christian martyr, St. Lucy. It is celebrated with such vigor there probably because Sweden is so dang dark and the feast of St. Lucy celebrates the triumph of light over darkness. It is celebrated in remembrance of St. Lucy visiting the starving Christians in the catacombs wearing a wreath of candles on her head to illuminate her path so as to leave her hands free to carry as much food as possible.
Traditionally the oldest girl in Swedish families brings everyone breakfast in bed wearing a flaming wreath of candles (cool huh?). There are also special processions and prayers to go along with the celebration. We, however, are not Swedish so Anne does not have to wear a flaming headdress (not this year anyways). Instead we are celebrating the day as Germans celebrate everything…with food.
For breakfast this morning Mom made us a Santa Lucia Crown. A sweet bread with maraschino cherries and a powdered sugar glaze.
Mom found this recipe in a cookbook called “Cooking with the Saints” several years ago and it has been part of our family’s tradition ever since.
Happy Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe!
I might have mentioned that there are a lot of feast days in December, but today is particularly special to us because Our Lady of Guadalupe is the patroness of our family.
Today’s feast day celebrates the apparition of Our Lady to Juan Diego on Tepeyac Hill in Mexico. Juan Diego was an Aztec convert to Christianity and under Our Lady’s instructions he picked roses growing miraculously on the hill to bring to the bishop. He carried the roses in his tilma and when he emptied them out to show the bishop he saw that Our Lady had miraculously left her image on his tilma. The tilma with the miraculous image can still be seen at the Guadalupe Basilica. You can read the full story of The Virgin of Guadalupe here (and I encourage you to).
Our Lady of Guadalupe is extremely important to our family and, as I understand it, very important to the Mexican people. One of Dad’s Mexican friends said, “90% of Mexicans are Catholic, but 100% believe in our Lady of Guadalupe.”
Santa in a Candle!
Happy Gaudete Sunday everyone. Gaudete Sunday is the third Sunday of advent and is a day of celebration (unlike all those other feast days in advent…).
Today is the day we celebrate the nearness of Christmas. Today is the day that everyone wears pink (except Stephen), to show how happy they are. So, to celebrate this day I want to share with everyone one of our new favorite Christmas decorations. Santa in a candle!
I think this could become a great new Christmas tradition like elf on a shelf, except Santa can’t move cause he’s stuck in a candle! Don’t ask me how he got there, because I don’t know. All I know is we were burning the candle, so the wax was all liquid, and somebody (Stephen or Nicholas) stuck Santa in the wax. Now Santa is trapped in the hardened wax. We could light the candle, melt the wax, and pull the jolly fat man out, or just burn the candle until Santa is free, but then we would lose this great decoration.
Power Ranger Pens.
Some people collect rocks,coins,stamps,and bottle caps. I collect pens, but not just any pens, I collect pens with attitude. You know, like teenagers with attitudes. I collect Power Ranger Pens.
There are two teams of Power Ranger Pens,the three
shiny ones and 
the six matte ones.
Now I know there is not a yellow ranger pen, but I have not seen a yellow one yet.
He’s a Mutie!!!!
So we all know about the X-men comics and how most of the normal people in them for some insane reason want to kill the X-men and all other mutants (but not other superheroes…weird). Furthermore, everyone in this weird universe assumes any abnormality is due to being a mutant (and they’re usually right!). In light of this, I think if I were in the X-men universe I would probably get run out of town on a rail!
No, unfortunately I cannot shoot lasers out of my eyes and I am not invulnerable, I do not have metal claws and I am not covered in hair…well I guess I am, but only in the normal way (we’re all mammals right?), but I do have a couple of oddities. For instance, my left eye lid droops significantly, my right collar bone is bigger than my left, most of my bones have a point on them, my jaw was too small so all my teeth came in VERY badly (Mom had them fixed, but I kind of looked like a shark), and my lower jaw cannot extend past my upper jaw.
Now if normal humans in the X-men universe ever noticed even one of these traits they would raise a hue and cry and chase me from the town… or just kill me. Now some people might rise to these citizen’s defense claiming they only attack people who are clearly mutants, but I am not exaggerating. I read an eighties Marvel comic where a preteen boy threw one of his classmates. Said classmate jumped to the natural conclusion that the boy who threw him must be a mutant (he wasn’t) so he got a pistol to shoot the boy. Now I don’t know about you, but people threw me when I was a kid and it never even crossed my mind that they could have superpowers, but maybe I was wrong, maybe I’m the crazy one, maybe Phillip really is a mutant…
Happy Feast of the Immaculate Conception
Boy there are a lot of celebrations in December (I think it’s because Europe is the birthplace of the church and unlike here in Florida, it gets really cold in Europe in December and you have to do something to fight of the depression of the freezing cold).
If you’re like me you find yourself thinking, “How could Christ be conceived on December 7th and born on the 25th?”
I know I’m a bad Catholic, because the Immaculate Conception celebrates the conception of Mary. This should be obvious. It’s the Immaculate Conception because we celebrate that Mary was conceived without sin (Christ was too, but we really celebrate that he was God and chose to be conceived as man).
There actually isn’t an elaborate tradition for the feast of the Immaculate Conception (which seems weird now that I think of it), but it is a Holy Day of Obligation, which means as a Catholic you are required to attend Mass. This is great, because, aside from the joys and glories of going to Mass, you also get a “Get out of School Free” card since it’s a required religious observance.
Advent!
Many times when Advent rolls around, not only are we seriously unprepared (we almost never have candles for the Advent wreath), sometimes we even have to buy a new Advent wreath. But not this year.
No, this year we were more than prepared. This year we had our candles and the wreath to go with it.
This year we have the advent calendar out,
and all the pieces ready to be hung up.
This year we even have a Jesse Tree 
(something I don’t even remember doing before now)! Yep, I think it is safe to say we were all prepared this year. Then again this post is a little late…
Happy St. Nicholas Day!
Happy St. Nick’s Day dear readers! Now if you didn’t know that today is St. Nick’s Day then you are not German. I don’t care where you were born or who your parents are, if you don’t celebrate the sixth of December by putting your shoes out for the patron saint of children to fill with candy then you are not a true German (the same way people who don’t eat hot dogs are not true Americans).
Now many people think that in German tradition St. Nicholas only brings gifts on Christmas, but that’s not actually true. In traditional German tradition the Christkindl (Christ Child) brings Christmas gifts. While St. Nicholas brings gifts on his feast day (today). he places his gifts in children’s shoes that they put out for him on the night of the 5th (Nathaniel’s is the cowboy boot).
Every year he brings us candy and a brand new Christmas ornament. The ornaments always work together on some theme (this year we got sea animals), and are usually picked out specifically for each family member. 
(They are arranged in order of oldest to youngest; the stripped fish at the top is Dad’s, then the blue seahorse is Mom’s, and the pink dolphin at the end is Veronica’s) This is a great tradition because now I have over twenty cool and unique ornaments.
This year to celebrate the day Anne made traditional German spice cookies
and we packaged them in bags to give to our friends at the parish hall during coffee and doughnuts last Sunday (by the way please comment and let us know how they tasted). Like Nathaniel said, we’re really thematic this year.
Bragging Rights!
Hey everyone, it’s December fourth! You know what that means. I can now officially brag about my birthday! Now, this may seem like an odd thing to say, but there is actually a rule in our house about when you can start bragging about your birthday. The reason for this is, apparently when my older brothers were little they would start to brag to their brothers, (and Mom) about their birthdays at least three months in advance. So, Mom made a rule that you had to wait till it was a month away from your birthday to start talking about it. That being said… It’s a month away from my birthday, it’s a month away from my birthday, it’s a month away from my birthday. Okay, now I’m done.