Santa Lucia

Today is the feast day of St. Lucy. I don't have a ton of time to write so to find out more about her you can go to this page of the Catholic Culture web site. When I taught Religious Education at church I always taught about St. Lucy for the boys. This may seem strange because most of the traditional activities surrounding St. Lucy have to do with girls. I taught about her because boys love gore and St. Lucy had her eyes poked out as one of her tortures to try to get her to renounce Christ. Wow, what a faith! In art she is often depicted carrying her eyes on a plate. This fact always made her memorable to the class. I would often put two little bouncy balls on a plate for a child to hold while telling this story. My philosophy is to reel them in with something interesting so they can remember the story for years to come when the real meaning may become deeper. I hope St. Lucy doesn't mind.I made these little Santa Lucia dolls from this pattern. I couldn't find all the correct materials so I just improvised. I really enjoyed painting the dolls but not getting the dresses to fit. I planned on making a special Santa Lucia breakfast and having the boys make and wear star hats but it just didn't happen. We may try to make this snack later today if I have all the ingredients.

In the above picture you can see my pie crust table (which never got the blue star cloth I wanted to make...oh, well). I have St. Nicholas and Our Lady of Guadalupe sitting with the Santa Lucia dolls. Nice little reminders. Below is the current Nativity set up. Nolan changes it almost every day depending on which piece he opened. Today were the benches so he has Mary and Joseph taking a rest. He is pondering what kind of food they would have been cooking and wants to add some to the pot.Below is another shot of the Nativity so you can see the shepherd with his sheep (and cow and goat which makes him a cowherd and a goatherd).And here is our Angel from on high with two very pretty kitties watching over the whole scene.