liturgical year – SIMCHA FISHER

How to keep the “Lent” in Valentine’s Day

Have you looked at your calendar lately? Have you noticed that, in 2024, the most dark and difficult annual day of self-examination and penitence falls, by some terrible misfortune, on the same exact same day as Ash Wednesday?

I speak, of course, of that darkest, most difficult, most penitential of days, Valentine’s Day.

Ho ho! I joke. I like Valentine’s Day. It is fine. I, like most Americans, act normal about this holiday, and do not get weird about it. We definitely aren’t mad or upset because our annual Whitman’s sampler, dyed flower and Temu lingerie fest is being threatened by Actual Spoilsport, God. American Catholics would never! We know better, and we always act normal!

I joke again. In fact, there is a flurry of consternation about how we are supposed to celebrate Valentine’s Day without letting it overshadow the beginning of Lent.

The answer is, of course, you can’t, silly. Ash Wednesday is way more important than Valentine’s Day, so it gets first dibs on your time. If Valentine’s Day is important to you or to the person you love, there’s nothing wrong with that! You just move it, and celebrate it some other day. This is just what it’s like being an adult: Sometimes things just don’t work out, and you have to be flexible.

But that doesn’t mean some people aren’t going to get a little too flexible. Call it the New Evangelization or call it an obsession, but I can’t stop thinking about something that happened a few weeks ago at Mass…

Read the rest of my latest for Our Sunday Visitor.

Through the Year With Tomie dePaola GIVEAWAY!

Note: I am now an Ignatius Affiliate, and earn money when readers purchase books through my links.

When Tomie dePaola died a few years ago, I had just recently gotten up the nerve to ask him for an interview, and it’s an everlasting regret that I missed my chance. I don’t know how likely it is that he would have agreed, but he certainly was generous with his work.

That’s one reason it feels like such a gift to have this new book, published posthumously: Through the Year With Tomie dePaola. Ignatius is sponsoring one copy for me to give away! Read on.

Through the Year With Tomie dePaola collects the “art mail” he used to send to family and friends (and sometimes post on social media), and it is lovely.

Each page features one of his bright, fluid illustrations of a saint or other depiction of a holy day, and is decorated with dePaola’s characteristic clouds, stars, leaves, flowers, and doves, and the pictures are accompanied by text written by Catherine Harmon and John Herreid. It feels like a beloved journal or sketchbook by someone in love with celebration of the liturgical year.

There is not an entry for every single day, but each month features between eight and fourteen little pictures and passages, and each month also ends with a list of “other important feast days.”

Some are well known

some are more obscure

some include prayers

a few are specifically American, while still staying grounded in the faith

and a few include history lessons, and are also just cute

It is a small, solid hardcover that comes with a ribbon bookmark, so you can keep your spot and dip into it as you move through the calendar.

This book would be an easy enrichment for evening prayers, or would be a pleasant way to start the day with little ones. It would make an appealing baptism or first Communion gift (or confirmation gift, depending on how old kids are when your diocese confirms them). The reading level makes it completely appropriate for older kids, maybe through age 12 or even older, but they may look at the cover and think it’s aimed at younger kids. I would not hesitate to make it part of family prayers, though, even if you don’t have younger kids in the house, because dePaola’s art is for everybody.

AND NOW THE GIVEAWAY! Just leave a comment on this post and I will use a random number generator to chose a winner in a few days. U.S. and Canada only, please. And please o please be sure that the email you use when you comment on this site is a real email address! I will be using it to contact you if you win. If the winner is “nicetryfeds@biteme.edu” then you won’t get your lovely book.

If you just want to buy the book, which is $18.99, you can order it here. Go ahead! I get a commission! Mama needs a new set of teeth.

This is the second book that John Herried has produced, and I’m delighted to see him using his considerable creative powers in this direction. If you haven’t yet checked out his Catholic Home Gallery, also from Ignatius, do take a look! It’s an excellent collection of contemporary Catholic artwork in all different styles, and the book is designed so you can pull the prints right out and hang them in your home. I interviewed John about it here.

And thank you to Ignatius for sponsoring this giveaway!

One Theresa at a time: A quick note to new Catholics

By this time of year, newly baptized Catholics have really begun to settle in to their pews, physically and metaphorically. The solemn rites are long since accomplished, the party is over, and now the hard and joyful work of practicing the faith begins.

At this stage, it’s not uncommon for new converts to begin to take on a slightly baffled look, because while they definitely felt overcome with Paschal joy at the time, they may now also feel overwhelmed with . . . Catholicism in general. Specifically, the vast and bewildering array of cultural and liturgical and pious practices and customs and traditions that never came up in RCIA, but which everyone around seems to know about, and treats as if they’re completely foundational to their faith. Saints, prayers, holy days, sacramentals, pieties, practices, not to mention synods and sodalities and bitter Twitter fights over doctrine. It’s all a bit much.

Fear not, my brothers and sisters in Christ. I’ve been a Catholic for most of my life, and I feel exactly the same way. Just about every time I spend time with a large group of Catholics, in or outside of church, I end up hearing something that makes me feel like a newcomer.

I have come to conclude that the Catholic church is, like, really really big, and as such, it is, like, really really full of stuff. I’m never going to feel completely caught up, and that’s okay. As long as I keep trying to come back to Jesus, it’s okay.

Here are just a few of the things that I, as a nearly lifelong Catholic, still find confounding:

I can’t keep my creeds straight. When I was little, my mother had me memorize the Nicene creed. Or possibly the Apostle’s Creed. It was definitely the one that we didn’t say at Mass, and I could say it! as long as we weren’t at Mass. If we were at Mass, I could only say the one everyone else was saying, whichever one that was. You just get swept along with the general rumble of the crowd and you don’t stand a chance. I fully understand that people have shed blood over whether it ought to be homoousios or homoiousios, and I admire that, but if I were at Nicea, let me tell you, I would have not have been helpful. The body is not made up of one part, but many, and I am the part saying, “Wha?” and I’m too old to change. And yet I am still a real Catholic.

I can only know about one Theresa at a time. There are about fourteen different St Theresas (including Thereses and Teresas, not to mention Thérèses). Some of them said something about how people are like flowers; some of them apparently are little flowers in some way that escapes me at the moment. We have a picture of one of them dressed up like an entirely different saint, purely to be confusing. The one I’m very clear on is Mother Teresa, because I remember when she was alive and hanging out with President Reagan, who was also alive at the time. I saw them on TV, so that helps. But then there is the Theresa with the nice cheeks. You know the one. Beyond that, I am completely at sea, and when people start going on about the Interior Castle, my eyes glaze over and I wonder if there will be sandwiches at this thing, or what. And yet I am still a real Catholic.

I have no idea how to say the Divine Mercy Chaplet. I’m very much in favor of mercy, but when I see a chaplet, it’s pretty clear to me that that’s just a stumpy little rosary, and I feel that this is much easier to lose in the washing machine than a normal rosary. So what you should do is get yourself a normal rosary, say part of it, and fall asleep. Boom, divine mercy. Boom, real Catholic!

The liturgical calendar in general. I’m already losing my mind over here trying to keep Christ in Christmas while buying presents for everybody but not too many presents, and making sure we’re all sufficiently praying for the souls in purgatory while we dress up like zombies, because if we don’t do that, we’ll drive our children away from the faith, and so on. And we won’t even talk about what it does to your psyche to cook for Passover while you’re fasting on Good Friday.

So I have given myself a pass for, for instance, having to look up every single Holy Day of Obligation every single time, every single year, and I don’t even feel bad about it. I only have so many brain cells. When I hear about people also keeping track of First Fridays or First Saturdays and then also ember days and rogation days and whatever the hell it is, I just assume they are praying for me, or people very much like me, and it will all even out. See above: Divine Mercy. Boom.

In short, it’s a big church. A very very very big church. And if you keep coming across things that are unfamiliar, don’t think of it as evidence that you’re a stranger. File it under “treats for later,” and maybe you’ll get to it in this world, and maybe you won’t. But someone is definitely praying for you, and we’re so glad you jumped in and became a real Catholic. Just keep coming back to Jesus, and you’ll be okay.

A version of this essay was first published on August 1, 2022 at The Catholic Weekly.

Meaningful Christmas traditions and how to wrangle them

I’ve tried various esoteric practices involving veiled candles, bits of straw, paper chains, acts of service, gift lotteries, medieval anagrams, and every other kind of overachieving cultural what-have-you that caught my eye while I was desperate to make everything Meaningful For The Children.

I remember one year worrying so hard about materialism that I told the kids that one of their presents would be the opportunity to choose a gift for a poor child, and donate it. It wasn’t a bad idea . . . for the older kids. The younger kids, predictably, misunderstood horribly, and it was bloody awful. I only hope they’re so young, they don’t remember the year Mama apparently told them they could pick a toy for themselves and then forced them to dump it into a box and walk away for no reason at all. AT CHRISTMAS.

So. We don’t do that anymore. Through the decades, here is what I have learned about Christmas family traditions . . .

Read the rest of my latest at The Catholic Weekly.

The Weight of Bells

It is an honor to be there, inside the church, under the steeple. But not all honors are easy to bear.

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.

Photo via Maxpixel (Public Domain)

How do you keep Easter going for fifty days?

Happy Easter! Christ is risen! Alleluia!

Remember, the Church is not like Walmart. We don’t celebrate a holiday for a day and then tear everything down the very next day as if it never happened. The Easter season lasts for fifty days, until Pentecost.

So, how do we observe Easter?

I realize that some of you live in bizarro land, and are already going swimming and using the AC and stuff; but here in the northeast, Easter comes as spring is just getting a foothold. The birds are newly hysterical with love, the streams are exuberantly throwing off their last loads of ice and rushing to meet each other, and there’s an almost audible glow around every bush and tree as the hard, closed buds finally burst into the first fresh greens of the year.

So I do feel like we’re celebrating Easter, resurrection, refreshment, renewal, and general hopefulness and fresh starts as we do the things that naturally go with the seasons: putting away boots, mittens, and snowpants, sweeping mud out of corners, clearing out flower beds, cleaning up the yard, planting window boxes, and finally opening the windows again. The hammock and trampoline are back in service.

There is, of course, also tons of special food in the house, and I bought a truly insane amount of matzoh, which we’ll turn into matzo brei.

But I’d love to add some overtly religious practices into our family routine, to set Easter apart from the rest of the year. What has worked in your family? A special prayer you only say during this season? Maybe candles at dinner? Maybe a song added to evening prayers? Music during meals? This year, we read the Easter homily by St. John Chrysostom on Easter day, and followed the orthodox tradition of having the kids shout back “He is angered!” every time that phrase came up, and then “He is risen!” every time that phrase came up. They loved it, but I think it would be less spectacular if we did it more than once a year.

Any ideas? Simple is good!

***
Image: Norway maple bud via Max Pixel

Oh, the Lents you can Lent!

Not only do we set the parameters for what we give up (sugar in coffee? A second cup of coffee? All the coffee?), but we decide what kind of thing we want to give up (or take on) — and why. Here are a few broad categories of ways to observe the penitential season. One or the other may be more spiritually fruitful for you, but none of them is really wrong . . .

Read the rest at the Register.

***

Loving the adult Jesus

Christmas is the infancy of the Faith, and most people find it pretty easy to be happy about about their Faith at this time of year — at least in the good moments. Even when the season is stressful or exhausting, most of us at least occasionally taste those golden moments where the music is right, the candles are glowing, we’re finally holding a mug of something hot, finally hearing the happy murmurs of the baby in the manger. At the best moments, we love Christmas, baby Jesus loves us, and it is just plain nice. It’s simple to respond as we should, at least on the good days. A simple “Gloria!” and we’re doing it right.

But what about when the liturgical year grows up?

Read the rest at the Register.

Advent is coming. Keep it simple! UPDATED

I know, I know, you’re focused on Thanksgiving right now. Just bookmark this for next week.

Advent is coming! I always feel a little silly saying that, because the word “advent” actually means “coming.” But that’s how life is when you’re In Charge of Stuff: you even have to plan about planning ahead. So, if you haven’t looked it up yet, the first Sunday in Advent is Nov. 30, which is . . . soon.

We do try to put off celebrating Christmas until it’s actually almost Christmas. I claim this is because it would be a violation of the integrity of the spirit of penance and preparation to behave as if Christmas has already arrived; but actually my main reason is that my fine young sons see decorations as a challenge. A punching challenge. When some new vision swims before their eyes, whether it’s a pillow or a brother or gorgeous centerpiece bedecked with fragile berries, gilded bells and trembling, cinnamon-scented miniature pine cones, they say to themselves, “Gotta punch that.”

So I put off Christmas as long as possible for Christmas’ own good. I don’t want Christmas to get punched.

Advent, however, can take a little smacking around. One of the great things about any kind of Advent preparation is that, by definition, you have to keep it simple and spare. A lush, lavish, complicated Advent makes about as much sense as a simple, understated fireworks display on the Fourth of July.

So as Advent approaches, I always remind myself that, while there are lots of wonderful ideas out there for how to observe the season, it’s not only impossible to do it all, it would be contrary to the spirit of the season to go overboard! I plan small, and we can always add things later on years when we’re feeling ambitious and energetic. We aim for simple, inexpensive, and edifying.

We do two things without fail every Advent. The first is to make and light an Advent wreath, which we attempt to light every night while singing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” (adding two verses each week); but some years, it’s mostly a Sunday thing. I just bought a cheapo twisted twig wreath at the dollar store, then use about forty yards of thread strapping evergreen branches down thoroughly. If I can’t find purple and pink candles, I just use white, and tie on bows made of ribbon or cloth in the right colors. Oh, and after a lifetime of trying to attach candle holders to a wreath, I just gave up, and now use (again, cheapo dollar store) glass candle holders, which I set inside the wreath. I put the whole thing on a pizza pan, so I can easily move it off the table and store it in a safe, unpunchable place when it’s not in direct use. Some years we have little golden balls and berries and doves, but other years, it’s just the greenery. Here are prayers for each Sunday. Print it out now, along with a few copies of “O Come Emmanuel,” and tape it to your pizza pan or something.

If this sounds unpleasantly practical and workaday to you, remember: Advent is dark. Lights out. Once you have candlelight and acapella singing, it’s just as magical and luminous and mysterious as whatever the Vatican is doing on that same day.

(The child pictured above is utterly failing to think, “Tippy candle? No pinecones? This Advent is not impressive at all!”)

The second thing we do for Advent is we all go to confession once or twice before Christmas.

That’s it. That’s the bare minimum, and some years, it’s also the maximum we can manage. There are plenty of wonderful Advent ideas. But please remember, KEEP IT SIMPLE. Don’t go overboard. Pick one or two, and don’t make it elaborate. And make sure you get to confession!

If you want a hands-on project for your kids but aren’t feeling very crafty, here is a free printable chain from Life Made Lovely. Print it out, cut the days into separate strips, and staple or tape them into a long chain. You can hang the chain on your Christmas tree if you have one already, or anywhere in the house (hang it high, to avoid punching). Starting on Nov. 29 (which is Saturday, the vigil of the first Sunday in Advent), you cut off one link each day and read what’s inside. This particular one just has a short description and a Bible verse to look up and read, and is designed for little kids; but if you Google “advent chain 2014,” you will find other styles, some more elaborate that others.

UPDATE: Rebecca Salazar hunted down a link that I thought was lost, so now you can also print and use the Advent chain links that my sister Abby Tardiff made up. These have complete short verses, plus pictures to color, on them. Link here.

If you like, you can color or attach the paper strips to construction paper strips before you make them into a chain: purple for the first, third and fourth weeks, and pink for the third week. I like the idea of a chain, because you can see it getting smaller and smaller as Christmas approaches. You can explain to kids that it reminds us of the chains of sin, which get weaker and weaker until our Savior arrives — and then the chain is gone.

If you do an advent chain that has pictures on it, you could also use the cut strips as ornaments for a Jesse Tree, adding one ornament each day of Advent. Or, if you’re feeling brave and have kids who are old enough, you could just dump all your craft materials which you have carefully kept organized and . . . sorted . . .

Tohu wa-bohu.

on the table, assign different symbols to each kid, and go hide for a couple of hours and see what happens, repeating the phrase “it’s only once a year” to yourself, and with the firm understanding that glitter on the floor doesn’t count as a mess unless it actually impedes your walking. We do this some years for our “day after Thanksgiving” tradition. Lacking space for a free-standing Jesse Tree, I just clip a branch from a bare tree and bolt it to the wall. It looks good and weird, like a Catholic home should.

Another very easy Advent tradition that we manage to keep as a family most years is to “fast” from dessert except on Sundays. I take what money I would have spent, and buy extra food for the church’s food pantry.

What are your Advent plans? On the years when you really followed the spirit of the season, what was it like?

***
[This post originally ran on the National Catholic Register in 2011.]