December 1

It's the first of December! New beginnings are always special, and this being such a festive month, the day seems all that more exciting. The new calendar pages with all the red and white and green put a smile on my face, as does scrolling through Instagram and seeing all the Christmas stories everyone is reading!

I suppose I've had that happy sigh of delight feeling today because I had all the ladies from church over for dinner last night and the house was filled with the sound of many dear voices, lots of candles flickering and flowers glowing, and the taste of delicious food. That means my house is already decorated for December (since I had to do it for the dinner) and so December began in a low-stress, lovely way. (Perhaps this is why so many people do their decorating in November....I usually vow not until December!)

There were some little tasty treats leftover from the dinner to nudge me along in my afternoon's work which was spending a few hours working on my j-term class "Paint Your Cake and Eat it Too." I can't wait for the class, but it is a little inconvenient to have to develop class plans in December! :)

We put the first ornament on our Jesse tree, hopefully we will stay on schedule for one a day and not get too far behind. I still need to go and hang the rest of the advent calendars.

The "history of Christmas" is the topic of our 3-week holiday school term (end of Nov to Christmas break). It's been fun to research and break down the origins of the holiday into about 12 days' worth of learning, reading, eating, and creating. This week we began with Jesus' birth then went back in time to talk about the pagan Roman holiday of Saturnalia. Then we jumped forward to St. Augustine and one of his Christmas sermons and then moved on to St. Boniface the Apostle of Germany and the legend of his using a fir tree to teach the Gospel (incidentally, we enjoyed the children's biography of St. Boniface: Bring Me An Axe by Brother Roberto). I've been steeped in this research for two months or so and it's got me thinking about what a gift having a winter festival to celebrate is and how much it helps to brighten up the dark, cold months.

Time to put in another hour on the classwork and then see what books are waiting for me on the bed stand. It'll probably be The Autobiography of Santa Claus, The Hobbit, and Queen Victoria's Sketchbook.

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