I made a new Lady Lent printable for our elementary church school class. We have several families who have not observed Lent before, so I wanted to make sure her meaning was very clear. (I think she's super fun, but I know some people think she's just weird!) I made the example above to demonstrate for my class in case we don't have time to cut out the legs in class, and will perhaps demonstrate tearing off a leg.
I made a few changes, including the poem, to make clear that Lady Lent personifies:
1) fasting - in addition to having no mouth, we will decorate her skirt with foods the kids eat during Lent after an activity about fasting.
2) prayer - in addition to the crossed arms on her chest, I added the Jesus Prayer to the right side of the page to discuss in class.
3) almsgiving - I added the last stanza to the poem to include "good deeds." We will also glue an apron onto her skirt, creating a flap we can lift to write our secret almsgiving plans. I used to do an almsgiving planning activity with my kids, in which I asked them to think of at least one act of kindness they could do each week for different people. When they were finished, we talked about giving in secret, and folded the papers in half to keep their plans private. I thought we could simply incorporate that into our Lady Lent
Grab the jpg above, or the pdf printable is below. The second page includes extra aprons for classes, if needed.
And here's my edited version of the poem:
Lady Lent, no mouth has she, She little talks nor eats
Upon her chest, her crossed arms rest, all day Christ she entreats.
And seven feet, no more, no less she has to count the weeks.
Each Saturday we cut away
one of her seven feet.
She reminds us that we fast and pray And try to do good deeds.
We do these throughout Lent
to get ready for the Feast.
[We'll still make a big one at home because my older kids don't want to be left out of our Lady Sarakosti tradition. We usually make ours out of construction paper, and we use most of a whole sheet for the skirt and body, plus the head and legs - so that she ends up being about three sheets of paper tall.]
I'm trying something new this year with a Triodion Calendar as I try to teach my older kids more about the weeks of preparation. You can still find the regular calendar here and a more fun one here.
We'll still make a Kyra Sarakosti, and you can find my funny joke about Kyra Meatfare here.
Its already December 5, but when my kids saw these old-fashioned advent calendars with the windows, they immediately wanted to make some. If you want to make some, too: The printable template (above, or two more below) has 25 windows (including the moon). Print two for each child on card stock. Color one of them, and on the other glue cut-out pictures from last year's Christmas cards or catalogues. The glued on pictures should be bigger than the window frames, but not overlapping any other windows. Next, number the windows and doors 1-25, and with an exacto knife, have an adult cut three sides of each one. Then glue the colored page over the glued-picture page, and there you go! Lots of pictures below, because I think this just turned out too cute.
pictures cut from cards and catalogues
gluing them over the window template
finished inside
After coloring the outside picture, we cut three sides of every window and door
with an xacto knife. I cut from the front, but showing the back so you can see.
On inside picture, put glue all around edges and in some of the white space on
the inside. Then lay the colored outside picture on top, lining up corners carefully
and smooth it flat.
Now you should be able to open the windows to see the pictures.
Doggies!
One child made the church doors be day 1 and 2, with an icon behind.
They liked lots of Christmas-y animal pictures.
And trees and lights.
Wise men, stars, shepherds and angels, too.
And cats in stockings.
Lots of Nativity scenes from our catalogues.
St. Lucia on day 13!
A variation. Don't cut out the windows and doors on the back row of houses that are partially covered.
And one more, in case you want to make a calendar but skip the coloring.
I grew up enjoying Christmas with family, special foods, and visits from Santa. It was always lovely and special, but it was a secular holiday. That might sound odd if you love nativity sets and midnight mass, but many Christians just don't celebrate religious holidays. Maybe they think Christmas trees are pagan, or that Christ wasn't born in winter, or wonder where the bible says you should celebrate Christmas?
Now my family celebrates the birth of Christ without reservation. The beauty of the incarnation is that just as Mary held God in her arms, just as she pressed her cheek to His, we can know Christ dearly too. God is with us! What better reason to celebrate? If you're still a little unsure about it all, I've written a little about the origins of what we do and why.
1. "Christmas" or "The Nativity According to the Flesh..."
The word "Christmas" is a shortened form of "Christ's Mass" from the Latin, meaning the celebration of the Eucharist (or the Divine Liturgy) on the feast of Christ. We officially call it, "The Nativity according to the flesh of our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ" or just "Nativity" because we are celebrating the Incarnation: when Christ who was God before the ages became flesh for our sake.
So, the celebration of Christmas began as a church service. At our parish, the Christmas vigil begins late at night on Christmas Eve followed immediately by the Divine Liturgy. The timing means that we share in the Eucharist around midnight, welcoming Christ's birth. This makes a long, but joyful, service as we sing the canon, "Christ is born, glorify him!" and children fall asleep on the floor. We break the fast together at church with sausage balls, spanakopita, chocolate, and other foods we've been missing, then hurry on to bed. When everyone wakes up the next morning, we enjoy the usual presents and time with family, and we rejoice to find the baby Christ in the manger.
2. Advent
We prepare for this service with a 40 day fast, which is called "The Nativity Fast" or "Philip's Fast" (because it begins after his feast day on November 14). More commonly in the West, it is called "Advent" meaning "coming" because the whole season is preparing us for the coming of Christ. (Western Christians have a shorter Advent beginning on December 1st.)
The 40 day fast began in imitation of Lent and Pascha (along with other liturgical parallels). In the early church, the big feasts like Pascha and Christmas were baptismal feasts. So the 40 day fasts were a time when the catechumens prepared for baptism, and the Church prepared to receive them, through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
So, we see both the preparation for baptism and for the coming of Christ in this season. While Lent is penitent, Advent is a joyful fast with fish and wine allowed on the weekends. Its also full of fun activities that prepare us for the coming of Christ like gift-making, keeping a Jesse Tree, or preparing a manger or nativity scene for Christ, as well as celebrations of a few special days like St. Nicholas Day and St. Lucia Day. We spend the whole season making ready, as one of my favorite hymns says,
"Make ready, O Bethlehem; for Eden hath been opened for all."
[A side note: American Thanksgiving falls within the fast, and obviously, that wasn't a consideration when they began the fast in ancient lands. But its a beautiful holiday, and so our bishops encourage Americans to relax the fast and celebrate by giving thanks.]
3. Was Jesus really born on December 25th?
Even though the calendar is rooted in historical events, it is primarily liturgical. It doesn't depend upon his actual date of birth. One explanation for this date is that it is exactly 9 months from the feast of the Annunciation on March 25th, or the conception of Christ. This feast was celebrated very early, and its date was chosen in relation to the date of Christ's death because of the ancient concept of "integral age."
A second theory is that the date was chosen to replace the pagan feast of the Unconquered Sun as an opportunity to introduce pagans to the true Son. The hymns illustrate this beautifully, "For by it, those who worshipped the stars were taught by a Star to adore You, The Sun of Righteousness, and to know You, the Orient from on High. O Lord, glory to You!" (Source) Christmas lights are similarly reminders of Christ, the true light.
Some Christians are scandalized that the early church may have replaced a pagan holiday with a Christian one. I must ask, then, how is it better for us to take a clearly Christian holiday and secularize it? Either way, the purpose of the celebration is theological, not necessarily historical, and show the church finding ways to redeem the time. (Source)
[Many Orthodox Christians still use the Julian calendar which differs by 13 days. So, they celebrate the Nativity on January 7th, but the reasoning is the same.]
4. Why We Have Religious Holidays
So why do we have any holidays? Is that in the bible? The Jews had a rich liturgical calendar and Jewish Christians initially continued to keep those feasts (see, for example, Acts 12:3, 20:16, 27:9). The Jewish Passover was clearly imbued with new meaning in Christ's resurrection (I Cor. 5:7), and became a distinctly Christian feast by the 2nd century. During the persecutions of the early church, local communities commemorated the martyrs with celebrations on the anniversary of their death. In the 4th century, with the legalization of Christianity, feasts celebrating occasions in the earthly life of Christ became popular especially on the supposed historical sites of the events, and this is when the feast of the Nativity arose. (Source) The remembrance of these holy days were the beginning of the liturgical calendar, which developed somewhat organically as the church deemed what was instructive and beneficial to the ongoing life of the church.
Its interesting that Christ himself celebrated Hannukah (John 10:22ff), a holiday which commemorated an important event in the community, but was not commanded with the other feasts in the Old Testament. If Christ only followed explicit biblical commands, he wouldn't have gone to the temple for that feast. But the life of faith is richer than mere law-keeping, its the sanctification of all things. In the same way, the church calendar is the celebration of God's saving work within time.
The liturgical calendar is like the most beautiful church school curriculum, worship plan, and memorial service combined. In the course of a year, the average liturgical Christian will learn theology by singing the hymns of the feasts; she will hear how the Old Testament is fulfilled by Christ through the scripture readings; see the many ways that the light of Christ can be shown in our lives by hearing the lives of the saints; and grow in understanding of all of Christ's saving work through his incarnation, ministry, death, and resurrection. More on the liturgical calendar here.
5. The 12 Days of Christmas
While most Americans start celebrating Christmas sometime in November (or before), Orthodox Christians fast to prepare for this feast. But, not to worry, when the feast arrives, we celebrate for 12 days! Since Christmas and Theophany were linked from the beginning, the 12 days between them became the festal period, full of caroling, food, and decorations. So you don't have to take your tree down until January 6! (Fr. Andrew has a more detailed and humorous take on the length of Christmas here.)
Christopsomo!
6. St. Nicholas and Stockings
We can't leave out St. Nick! He is known for his generosity, especially in the story of St. Nicholas tossing gold coins through the window into stockings (or shoes) of three poor maidens. Because this great saint is remembered during Advent, he became associated with Christmas.
The Puritans who came to America opposed religious holidays, and so they celebrated a secular version of Christmas. Later, when other colonists brought over traditions of St. Nicholas celebrations, he was gradually secularized and mixed into the American Christmas celebration. Clement C. Moore's classic poem, "A Visit from St. Nicholas" solidified the new image of the secret, gift-giving elf, instead of a bishop. Source
Even though many Americans don't think of the ancient Bishop of Myra, they still put out stockings and he still fills them! Orthodox families incorporate St. Nicholas (or Santa) into their celebrations in many different ways, but the Church remembers him on his own feast day on December 6. Its worth learning about this historical saint and incorporating his feast day into your celebrations!
We leave our shoes out for St. Nicholas on the evening of
December 5 with carrots for his donkey!
So, don't worry about the historical accuracy of the December 25th; you can keep celebrating into January; and yes, Virginia, there is a St. Nicholas. May your Christmas be filled with with anticipation, joy, and thanksgiving because truly God is with us! Christ is born!
This year, I'm finally getting into the rhythm of the Apostles' Fast - celebrating for a long period after the resurrection, and then again for Pentecost. Then, just as the Apostles began their hard work, we, too, take up the mission of the Gospel and return to fasting.
I've made a kids' calendar printable for Lent, and the Nativity and Dormition fasts, but I never know what to do with the Apostles' Fast. Since it is a little longer this year, I decided its time to organize something for the kids, and I'm pretty excited about what I've got planned.
Since this fast is variable in length, instead of counting down the days, we’ll count up! I made a set of 40 postcards, including the 12 Apostles, some of the Seventy Apostles, and several saints Equal to the Apostles. The fast is usually (much) shorter than 40 days, so this should be more than enough for most years, and I can save the leftover cards for future years.
Each day (or at least a few times a week) we'll select one postcard and learn about that saint named on the card. Then we'll decorate the front of the postcard with a picture of the saint or their story, and write a note to a friend on the back. I think we'll keep our finished cards in a basket on the kitchen table where we can see them throughout the fast. On the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, we'll celebrate by collecting all the postcards and sending them to our friends - just like the Apostles were sent out to deliver the Gospel!
[A little update to show our first handful of cards.
My girls really like cutting shapes out of construction paper!]
If you want to get in on the fun, you can download the Postcard pdf. I really wanted to keep it from being too complicated, just simply print and cut the cards and decorate when you can. Of course, in summer it is hard to stick to a daily activity, so feel free to just make cards on week days or in a Sunday school class, or whenever you have a quiet moment during the fast, whatever is simplest and most helpful for your family. Use the link or check out the embedded file below. Blessed fast!
Postcards (I used 65# colored paper from walmart, which is heavier than printer paper, but lighter than cardstock so it works better in my home printer.)
Easter, or Pascha, along with Lent and Holy Week, has become my favorite time of year. These days of intense preparation are beautiful and difficult and call me back to a place of deep joy.
So each year around this time, when I see people lamenting bunnies and pastel eggs, and dismissing the whole thing as pagan, I want to remind them of the beautiful Christian origins of this feast. This is the Feast of feasts! Early Christians didn't keep this feast because they secretly didn't want to give up their pagan traditions - they had the greatest reason of all to celebrate. We, too, have every reason to celebrate this day with joy - even with eggs and baskets!
So, to encourage you to embrace this season, I've put together a brief list of Easter facts and symbols explaining their origins (with sources). I'm not a historian, so I'm relying heavily on wikipedia, and in this case, I'm grateful for the communal knowledge it offers on the subject. I'm also including some pictures from my family's celebration of Pascha in recent years. Here we go!
1. "Easter" or "Pascha"
Icon of Christ on the cross at St. Nicholas
Orthodox Church in Jackson, TN, 2015
The word "Easter" derives from the old Germanic word for the month Easter usually fell in: Ēosturmōnaþ (our month of April). The month was named for the goddess Eostre, a germanic divinity, in the same way that many of our months are named for Roman gods. This connection to the goddess is dependent solely on a statement by Bede in the 8th century. But the celebration of Easter undoubtedly preceded the term. (Wikipedia: Easter Etymology)
Early Christians actually called the feast by the greek name for Passover, since the resurrection happened during the Passover weekend and the earliest Christians were Jews. Πάσχαor Pascha is the greek word. (Wikipedia: Easter Etymology) The words can be used interchangeably. In the US, the name "Pascha" is still used by Orthodox churches.
In 1 Corinthians, Paul calls Christ the passover, or Pascha, "For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." Christ fulfills the old feast, and is himself the new feast!
2. Beginnings
Easter began as Jewish Christians continued to celebrate Passover with the new Christian implications. A fully formed Christian celebration of Pascha is evidenced by the mid-2nd century by the Paschal homily of Melitos of Sardis. (Wikipedia: Easter in the Early Church, and the Homily)
The term "lent" is derived from an old English term meaning spring. In Greek speaking countries it is called Μεγάλη Τεσσαρακοστή, which means "Great 40 days," but still called "Great Lent" in English. (Wikipedia: Great Lent)
In the early church, new Christians prepared for their baptism with a period of fasting and prayer. This gradually developed into a 40 day fasting period, and was connected to Easter, and was eventually adopted by the whole community in communion with the new Christians' baptism. The liturgical celebration of Lent and Holy Week vary in the East and West, especially in duration/structure, and among Orthodox Christians customs vary in different regions, but they all originated as a time of repentance and preparation for baptism. For Catholics, Ash Wednesday is 45 days before Easter, or 40 days if you don't count the Sundays. For Orthodox, Lent starts on Clean Monday, 48 days before Pascha, or 40 days plus Holy Week. (Wikipedia: Lent)
Holy Week is an intense week of services, walking us through the final days of Christ's life. My favorite part begins when we read 12 gospel passages about the passion on Thursday night and during the service nail an icon of Christ on a cross. On Friday morning, the children decorate the funeral bier with flowers. Then, we have a shorter service remembering Christ being taken down from the cross, during which the icon is taken down and wrapped in a sheet and laid on the funeral bier. That night we carry the funeral bier in a procession around the church, and re-enter the church by going under the bier (symbolizing our union with Christ in death). Holy Friday services are powerful and beautiful!
On Saturday night, around midnight, the church is dark. Slowly, chanting a beautiful invitation to receive Christ's light, the priest brings one candle from the altar, and everyone lights their candle until the church is full of light. Soon, we shout and sing Christ is risen in many languages. The fast is over and the celebration has begun. After the Liturgy, we have a big feast in the middle of the night, eating all the foods we've been fasting from. I love that all of our serious hard work ends with full-hearted fun.
4. The date
Churches in the East and the West use the same ancient formula to calculate the date of Easter, but the East uses the old Julian Calendar as opposed to the new Gregorian calendar. So Eastern churches celebrate Pascha sometimes several weeks after Western Eastern, although occasionally they still fall on the same date. You can read the specifics of the calculations at the link. (Wikipedia: Easter computations) In 2016, Easter and Pascha are 5 weeks apart! So if you miss out on Western Easter, you still have time to join in on Eastern Pascha. ;) In 2017, we'll celebrate together!
5. Easter Baskets
Easter baskets at the front of the church at
St. Nicholas Orthodox Church
Early Christians fasted prior to Easter by giving up meat, eggs, and dairy (as well as wine and oil). So when Pascha arrived, they brought baskets of these rich foods to the church to be blessed. After the Paschal Liturgy they feasted on these foods in the spirit of the joy of the resurrection. (Wikipedia: Easter Egg Lenten Tradition)
Eastern Orthodox Christians still keep this tradition, with varying customs. In our church, we bring our baskets, laden with food and decorated with flowers and fancy cloth covers (like mine shown at the top), into the front of the nave of the church during the Liturgy. At the very end of the service, the priest blesses the eggs and "flesh meats" - and then we take the baskets to the hall to enjoy our feast together. Besides food for the church feast, many families include foods that they will take home and enjoy throughout the rest of Bright week as they continue to celebrate at home. In our basket, we included butter, eggs, chocolate for the kids, summer sausages and fancy cheeses.
Eggs are certainly a sign of new life and spring, and this fits thoroughly with the themes of Passover and Easter. While pastel and chocolate eggs are modern traditions, the egg itself has long been associated with Christian Easter. The egg reminds us of a stone, but, like Christ's tomb, it breaks open to reveal new life.(Wikipedia: Easter Egg)
Orthodox Christians traditionally dye their eggs not in pastels, but deep red for the blood of Christ, which yields this new life. The tradition of red eggs comes from legends about Mary Magdalene, my patron saint. (Wikipedia: Easter Eggs Legends) The one I'm most familiar with tells how Mary shared the gospel with the Roman Emperor. When appearing before the emperor, one usually brought a gift, and Mary, having given away all of her possessions to the poor, brought a humble egg. The emperor was offended by her simple gift, and when she told him that Christ was risen from the dead, he rudely replied, "He is no more risen than that egg is red!" And immediately the egg turned red in her hand. (From a Children's Paradise of Saints)
I can appreciate another reason eggs may have become abundant at Easter celebrations. Christians fasted from eggs during the springtime, when hens suddenly begin laying lots of eggs! So by the time Easter arrived, they needed to eat all the eggs so they wouldn't go to waste. We have a dozen or so chickens at our house, so I try to dye a bunch of red eggs to share each year!
my red eggs, ready to go to church!
7. The Easter Bunny
A beeswax egg candle, cadbury eggs, homemade donuts for breakfast;
bunny (!) legos and new bibles were in the kids' Pascha baskets last year.
Orthodox Christians don't have any bunnies in their traditions, although I might still eat a chocolate one! Wikipedia suggests the easter bunny was developed later by German Lutherans to reward good children much like Santa Claus. So, although this is one of the customs people are quick to call pagan, it seems to be just a fun, folk tradition with springtime symbols. (Wikipedia: Easter Bunny Association with Eostre) We don't play Easter bunny in our family, but we still enjoy treating the kids with baskets of their own on the following morning, with chocolates, books, and toys. Here's our Pascha breakfast table, late on Pascha Sunday last year (after we came home and slept off our late night Liturgy and feast).
-------
So there you go. Whatever customs you don't like, the thoroughly Christian traditions are rich enough that you can easily do without bunnies and pastels and still celebrate this feast with joy.
This video shows the end of the procession at the Paschal vigil last year. We've just filled the dark church with light and we begin to shout, "Christ is risen!" in many languages. Last year, I had a 1 week old newborn, but I didn't want to completely miss our mission church's first Paschal celebration, so baby and I sat in the narthex to watch, and that's where I took this video. Towards the end, you can see our baskets at the front of the church and children sleeping in the chairs - this is the joy at the end of the journey.
End of the procession during Paschal Matins. Christ is risen!
I've mostly discussed the light-hearted customs of baskets and eggs, but they are only a small part of this rich feast. The celebration of Pascha reveals the mystery of the Christian faith in the resurrection, the eighth day. More than just remembering the resurrection, we immerse ourselves in it "to experience the new creation of the world, a taste of the new and unending day of the Kingdom of God." (Orthodoxwiki: Great and Holy Pascha)So don't miss out on this Feast of feasts on account of bunnies or pagans. Instead, let's celebrate it with prayer, struggle and beauty, with fun and food, singing and shouting "Christ is risen!" because, truly, He is risen.
I made some new printables for the kids at our church last week, and wanted to share.
First, is a new version of my older Lenten Calendar - the difference is that this one is made with cartoons I drew myself (and the previous one used the line drawings from the OCA education website), but also I made a second page with stamps of many of the other services of Lent. You can either paste them in to match your church's service schedule, or earn stamps as you attend services. I'm not sure how I'll use them this year, but here they are:
I drew a Lady Lent that includes the poem:
And finally I made these cards of services of Great Lent. I made these specifically to create a bulletin board for our church kids. I printed the first page (which has the Sunday's of Lent) full size, but I printed pages 2 and 3 at 50% so that the cards are smaller. Its basically a green winding path with the large Sunday cards spaced evenly throughout, and the smaller weekday cards inserted where they belong on the calendar. I also cut out a small black figure of Lady Sarakosti, and the children and I will move her along the path through Lent.
You could probably come up with other uses for these cards - let me know if you do!
We're back to school this week! I'm really grateful for a return to routine, oh yes, I am.
We've returned to a mostly Charlotte Mason style again this year, although we're keeping many elements of the Waldorf program we used last year. Its hard, really hard, to make all the choices about what and how to teach and to feel confident you've made the right decision. But I'm really appreciating Ambleside Online this year, and I'm feeling more and more confident that what we're doing works well for us.
Calendar Cards sitting on our kitchen corner shelf
Last year, I shared these feast day cards, and as I noted at the time I had forgotten a few important feasts. We moved our school work from upstairs to the kitchen table (which has been great), and suddenly our feast day cards have a nice place to sit and are much easier to see and remember. This has worked really well for us as a Church Year Calendar, and our whole family has enjoyed them beyond school time.
Initially I kept the extras in my teaching folder, but now the entire stacks sits on this corner shelf. I flip the card to the back when the feast/fast is passed to see what's coming up next (being mindful of moveable feasts and feast days in the middle of a fast). You can download the updated file here. There are 40 cards: one for the 12 major feasts, many popular saints, and fasting periods. Each card includes the date of the feast and the troparion (or other relevant hymn for fasts). I printed mine through fed ex printing on nice card stock (and they even cut the pages for me).
We're enjoying our Dormition Fast printable, and looking forward to celebrating the feast this weekend with lots of flowers!
I made some new animal bookmarks (sea animals and horses) for my girls. You can find the animal bookmark printables on my craft blog.
If you read my blog for very long, you'll find that there are two things that I love the most: specialbreadswithspecialshapesforholidays and the Jesse Tree. I get so excited about them and love to share when they turn out lovely. But I'm really bad at, like, everything else - so don't take this organization as the standard for the rest of my life. Still I hope some of these ideas can be helpful to others.
This year, I started early to organize my ornaments and readings - not quite so handmade, but neat and tidy and that makes me happy.
1. I bought an ornament storage box from Lowes.We now have two sets of ornaments, so I wanted a way to organize the ornaments by day - and easily see if we're missing something. I made a fancy, pretty, handmade ornament holder a few years ago, which kept spilling and my husband thought it was a fire hazard - so, a pretty little fail. This year I went to Lowes. The box has 48 compartments, so I put two days in the first four compartments to make room for 52. I wrote the numbers in the compartments with a gold pen. We'll keep the box under the tree (once we have a tree!)
2.I printed my Jesse Tree readings. I'm using the Jesse Tree readings from the festal celebrations group. They also provided some additional readings for each day, which are really nice. Somewhere I downloaded a pdf with the scripture readings and additional readings combined (I can't find the source for this pdf! does anyone know where it came from? Update: here it is in the festal celebrations fb group), and I had this printed and coil bound at fed/ex kinkos. It can be pricey - but I'm always very happy with things I print there, and now we'll have a nice book for years to come. We keep the book in a basket in the living room with our other read alouds and nativity books, and my Old Testament timeline in a plastic sleeve. We try to read at night after dinner, but don't sweat it if we get behind. I'm so grateful for all of the people who organized the Jesse Tree ornaments and readings in the first place!
3. I made an easy 40 day Advent calendar printable. While I LOVE the Jesse Tree, it doesn't provide a visual way to see how far you've come/have left to go - and you can't find commercial calendars with 40 days. There are a lot of complicated projects you can do to make your own, but this year I made a simple printable instead. We put it on the fridge, and I thought we could draw the ornament symbol or X each day. Grab the PNG below to print. (If you haven't see it yet, I made a couple of prettier ones - here and here!)
These organizers aren't necessary, of course, but now they're done - they make my fast a bit simpler and prettier - and maybe they'll make next year easier, too. So hopefully I can continue to move through the fast a bit more quietly now.
