Why is feast day celebrated

A Saint feast day is simply a day that is designated to celebrating the life of that Saint. It is very often on the day that they died, but not always. Some Saints have more than one feast day. For instance Mary, who is queen of the Saints, has many feast days year round under multiple names and devotions. Joseph also has several. You can also celebrate a Saint on the day of an important event of their life or on their canonization anniversary.

My original concept behind Catholic Icing was that if I was randomly in the mood to make cookies, I could look for an upcoming feast day and make them for that rather than just making something random and cute. This would basically be killing 2 birds with 1 stone. So under this concept, celebrate any Saint feast day that you randomly have the energy for! This will give you a good starting place and then you can add to your library of Saint books over the years.

I will mark the Saints below that have stories from this book. You can find all of my favorite Saint books for kids here. Really, you can choose who your patron Saint is! It can be any Saint that you have a special connection or devotion to. If you already have a favorite, you can run with that!

And you can encourage your children to build some special Saint devotions as well. Here are some places you might start to figure out who the special Saints are to your family:.

Our family likes to choose a patron Saint for each year at our home in January. This is usually based on a current stage of life or family event of that year. This is a tradition that many Catholic families love!

A fun and simple way to do this is to bake a cake or dessert of your choice , and sing to them! You can even light candles. Here is the song that I know many Catholic families to use. You will laugh at the simplicity haha. We like to decorate the top of the cake with the shared name. You can even decorate!!! So how does one go about planning a Saint feast day celebration?

Well you want to incorporate learning about the Saint. Sometimes we have a video, sometimes we have a picture book about that Saint or a page of a Saint treasury book that is devoted to them at least. If not, definitely tell your kids about the Saint or do some internet research. For instance, St. Anthony is the patron Saint of lost objects, so you might plan a scavenger hunt. Cecilia is the patron Saint of musicians, so you might make some musical instruments or some kind of feast day food that looks like musical notes.

Be creative in making connections and have fun with this part of planning your feast day celebrations! The Catholic faith is far spread, and there are different traditions for feast days all over the world!

Sweden has a lot of St. Lucia traditions, France has some interesting ways they celebrate St. Nicholas day, different foods and traditions take place all over the world! Find some that appeal to your family. Agnes is depicted holding a sheep, so you can celebrate with sheep crafts or activities. Catherine is often pictured with a wagon wheel, so you could make wagon wheel shaped pasta to go with dinner.

Your creativity is your only limit! Red and white are the symbolic colors of martyrdom, red symbolizing the blood that was spilled and white to stand for the incense of the Saint. I also have symbolic strawberry red and white cupcakes. Both recipes would be perfect for many Saint feast days! It could be a prayer written by that Saint, a special devotion that Saint had, or a prayer asking for the intersession of the Saint.

Whatever the choice, this is an important part of celebrating any feast day. I have a printable Saint Puppet Ebook that has templates to help you make any Saint into a paper bag puppet with your kids. There are a lot of resources now available online for celebrating Saint feast days, so search for ideas of others!

Why re-invent the wheel? Secondly, sometimes the Church will postpone the celebration of a saint, due to their date of death falling in the midst of Lent. During the season of Lent it is more difficult to celebrate the life of a saint, as it is a penitential season and the Lenten liturgy supersedes most feast days.

An example of this is the feast of St. John Paul II. He died on April 2, , which would fall during Lent or the first week of Easter. As a result, the Church assigned October 22 to be his feast, which is the anniversary of his elevation to the papacy. This is the case for St. She died on September 30, but that is the feast of St.

Originally the first open spot in the calendar was October 3, and that was her feast for many years. However, after the liturgical calendar was reordered in , the date of October 1 opened up and she was given that day.

Above all things, the Church holds-up these men and women for our example and points to them to inspire us to be saints. Patrick March 17 and St. Cecilia Nov. We have feasts like this all the time. The second type of feast day that you have heard of is the special life events of Jesus or saints such as the Virgin Mary.

Christmas and Easter are some that immediately come to mind, when we celebrate the birth and resurrection of our Lord, respectively. Along those same lines are the Epiphany of the Wise Men Jan. Peter February 22! What I want to focus on are the feasts that celebrate buildings, like the Feast of the Dedication of John Lateran on November 9th. Why does the Church afford a feast day to a building?

First off, we are not actually having a feast day for the physical church building itself. Although we often simply refer to the feast as the Feast of the Basilica of John Lateran the actual name of the feast is the Dedication of the Basilica of John Lateran, which makes a difference.

We are celebrating the event in Church history when this church was dedicated. Why is this particular church building so important in the life of the Church that we give it a feast?