*Post inspiration; my little sister Monette, who will be celebrating her first Christmas this year with her first child. Dear New Mum, Advent is a beautiful time, a time of reflection and expectation as we await the celebration of His birth. I know that you are eager to share in this celebration with your child, and yet you wonder where to begin. Perhaps you have little/no family traditions to draw upon, the concept of ‘The Domestic Church’ is totally new to you, or you have been reading about Advent traditions and feel totally overwhelmed. “Where do I start?” “I want to do it all!” “I want to do it right!”…

This advent has been rather relaxing, I had intentions to celebrate many Feast Days but to be honest, some were celebrated and some weren’t. Instead we have relaxed and just drifted along, but we have a couple of little traditions which were kept and that I believe is the key to memories. Traditions. It always astounds me how quick the children are to adapt a new tradition, how they remember what we have done in the past. So what do our traditions consist of? Some are traditions that we have down since we first had children, such as our manger, although the current manger was made a couple of years…

Today is the Feast of St Barbara, a couple of years ago our family added a new tradition. This tradition was introduced to us by my friend A, whose family originates from a little Italian village Zolli in the Avellino Province of Italy. Every year the children are excited to make, smash and eat our tower. We make a chocolate tower that represents the tower that St Barbara was imprisoned in, inside are red and white lollies that represent her martyrdom and purity. We made our tower from a large family block of Cadbury. Then we melted cooking chocolate over a saucepan of boiling water and used it to ‘glue’…

The children were excited this morning with the arrival at our Nativity scene of our Three Wise Men who have been traveling towards “Bethlehem’ for many weeks now. Happy Epiphany:)

Yesterday was the Feast of St Barbara. We celebrated this Feast by making a ‘Tower’ a tradition we introduced a couple of years ago told to me by my dear friend Anna. Anna has many traditions her family keeps, many of their traditions come from a little Italian village where she spent some of her childhood years. This idea came originally from that Italian village, Zolli in the Avellino Province of Italy. We built a chocolate tower with red lollies in the center. The tower represents the tower St Barbara was locked in, the red lollies the blood of her martyrdom. The children close their eyes/are blindfolded and take turns…