Celebrating the Christian Year,
Building Family Traditions Around
All the Major Christian Holidays
by Martha Zimmerman
Reviewed by Martha Robinson
Celebrating the Christian Year, Building Family Traditions Around All the Major Christian Holidays by Martha Zimmerman. Paperback, $10.99. Please support HomeschoolChristian.com by purchasing this book using our Amazon affiliate link.
Martha Zimmerman draws upon her family's experiences with holidays throughout the year in her book Celebrating the Christian Year. She asserts that her family was brought much closer together by building meaningful traditions surrounding Christ. Recipes, ideas for parties and activities, readings, and crafts are some of the suggestions included.
Sections on Advent, St. Nicholas Day, St. Lucia Day, Christmas, and Epiphany break the "holiday" season into more manageable pieces. The Advent section, one of the longest in the book, includes history, general recommendations, Bible verses, how to make an Advent calendar, and the story of the candy cane. Next, Mrs. Zimmerman offers an alternative to Santa Claus during her discussion of St. Nicholas Day. She details the secular nature of Santa and differentiates the Christian Saint who lived around 300 A.D. Having lived about the same time, Saint Lucia was a Christian martyr in Sweden. Light, one of the big aspects of her celebration, makes St. Lucia Day a suggested addition to the Advent season. After this, Christmas has a very brief section, offering readings for Christmas eve and morning. Mrs. Zimmerman then gives a bit of background on the twelve days of Christmas and suggests that Epiphany is a great time to exchange gifts, just as the Wise Men gave gifts to Jesus. The Epiphany section ends with a summary of activities for the holiday season.
The remaining chapters have suggestions for making Christ the focus on other holidays. St. Valentine's Day, the Easter season (Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, Lent, Palm Sunday and Holy Week, Good Friday and Holy Saturday, Resurrection Day), St. Patrick's Day, the first day of Spring, Ascension Day, Pentecost, Halloween and All Saints' Day, and Thanksgiving are detailed. The book ends with a list of dates for the holidays and a lectionary, a list of Scripture readings for the individual days of the holidays.
Recommendation: Celebrating the Christian Year provides many ideas and suggestions to focus your family more on Christ throughout the year and to bring your family closer together with traditions rarely celebrated in Protestant families. The historical narrative makes this book particularly interesting.
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HomeschoolChristian.com's Holiday Page with crafts, cooking, links, and more!
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