We had to get caught up on our Jesse tree yesterday. We had a couple busy nights, and just never got to it. Luckily, Elias enjoys making/coloring the ornaments, and seeing our Jesse Tree fill up. As you can see from the picture, he colored more than just his ornaments…his face was decorated as well. (And his hand…and arm….)
Most of our advent activity time was spent in honor of St. Lucia, however. St. Lucia’s feast day is actually December 13th, but due to other commitments, we had to make that day’s advent activity less involved. So we learned about St. Lucia on the 14th instead. In case you don’t already know, St. Lucia was a young girl who refused to marry her betrothed because he was a pagan. The spurned man denounced her to the governor, Diocletian who then sent men to torture and kill her. There are two (and probably more) accounts of what happened to her. One was that she gouged out her own eyes to give to her betrothed (who was enamored with them) and said, “Now let me live to God.” The other is that when the torturers arrived, God made her heavy as a mountain, and she could not be moved. They then tried to burn her, but were not successful, so they gouged out her eyes with a fork. All very lovely to read about, I know….but she is celebrated for her commitment to God and her faith. She is the patron saint of the blind.
I found this prayer:
God, St. Lucy did not hide her light under a basket, but let it shine for the whole world, for all the centuries to see. We may not suffer torture in our lives the way she did, but we are still called to let the light of our Christ illumine our daily lives. Please help us to have the courage to bring our Christianity into our work, our recreation, our relationships, our conversation — every corner of our day. Amen
Since we had been focusing on Jesus as the “light of the world” this advent season, I thought that this fit in nicely. We decided to make votive candle holders in honor of this idea that we must always let our lights shine.
Here is how we did it:
1. I purchased some cheap votive candle holders, some mod podge, and chose a few colors of tissue paper, which I then cut into small squares.
2. We coated the outside of the candle holders with a thin layer of mod podge…I was planning on doing this step, but Elias loves painting, and could not resist using the paint brush. This made the whole project a lot messier…but I wanted him to be involved so I let him do it.
3. Randomly stick the tissue paper around the outside of the candle holder, overlapping some.
4. We then applied one more coat of mod podge around the outside of the tissue paper, and let them dry overnight.
This evening, we had a chance to try them out for the first time. They actually turned out rather nice.
Hopefully we will be able to enjoy and use these for years to come.