Catholic Family Traditions

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What are some Catholic traditions you do with your family or you remember from your childhood you did with Catholic parents or grandparents? I am in RCIA and I am interested in at home traditions to start with my family. I have read about Advent candles and wreaths but I do not know the details. Can anyone elaborate on this and other traditions? What do you do on feast days? Other Holy days?
 
We used an Advent wreath when I was a child. There are four candles, three purple, one pink. You light one purple candle during the first week, two purple candles during the second week, two purple candles and the pink candle during the third week, and all four during the fourth week. (Three are purple for penance and the fourth is pink for joy.)

Another tradition we had was that each of us had our own Nativity set. We also had three family sets. I’m all for letting kids have their own. This way they can play the Nativity story. Ours were typically glass but if you’re worried about glass and little ones you can buy or make ones that are child-friendly. (I made a plastic canvas Nativity for my kid several years ago. Friends of ours have a plastic VeggieTales Nativity that they let their grandchildren use for play.)

We also used to give up dessert as a family during Advent and Lent.
 
I always loved setting up the Nativity scene at Christmas. I also had an Advent calendar every year where you could open a little door on the calendar to count down to Christmas, and the last door on the 24th was Baby Jesus in the manger. Some families did a version of this called “Jesse trees” where you had a tree and every day counting down to Christmas you would add an ornament of one of the Old Testament patriarchs, in order, counting down to Jesus. You started with Adam, Noah, Abraham and so on. You can Google to see examples of them.

May was Mary’s month so we would take special flowers to Mary that month. On Mary’s birthday which was in September, we would have a little birthday party for her. It was a kids’ tea party with cookies and fruit drink (and I might have even had real tea with lots of milk) and the Mary statue as the “guest of honor”, everyone singing happy birthday, my dolls were the other “guests”, etc.

Another thing I remember was when my mother had to make lunch but was out of sandwich bread, which happened from time to time, she would cut up some baloney and cheese and put it on a plate with some fruit and tell me “This is what the Pope has for lunch, so you are eating just like the Pope” and I would picture Pope Paul VI in the Vatican in his white outfit, eating little cubes of baloney and cheese with some apples and grapes.

If you go to CatholicCulture.org and go to the part called “Liturgical Calendar” and look at the daily entries, each day they talk about the saint honored on that day (both current calendar, and traditional/ historic calendars) and they have a section for “Activities” that suggests things you can do with your kids to honor that saint. Also they have a section for “Recipes” that has some food or dessert associated with that saint. So you can make your own traditions. I even do some of them myself now that I have no kids, for example it suggested you eat traditional Kerala Indian food on the feast of St. Sebastian since he is a big patron saint there, so I went out and had some.
 
Our family has always had an Advent wreath, but we get so busy during this season, we often realize a few days before Christmas that we’ve never remembered to light it! Last year I found an Advent Calendar that is a little wooden house with boxes for each day. I found that each box has room for a chocolate for both kids and a message or a space for one of their Fischer-Price Nativity characters. So we put a figurine in several of the boxes and we save Baby Jesus for Christmas Eve. When the kids open their box, they can add the figurine to their nativity. The other days, I put special messages and other treats in the boxes.

This isn’t a “home tradition” as much, but we always start the Advent Season by going to a community Los Pasados celebration, where we follow St. Joseph and the Blessed Virgin through the town and listen to them knock on the doors and reenact the nativity story. The procession ends at a pavilion in the park and they do a Nativity pageant there. Obviously, this activity is somewhat based on availability.

Christmas caroling is always a good bet, and we like to have a small Epiphany celebration with our family and do a door blessing with blessed chalk.

We didn’t really have any great Lenten observances for the kids, but last year I got the idea to do a “Resurrection Garden”. It was sort of fun. You get one of those wide ceramic bowls that go under a potted plant and fill it with soil. Then you put a small pot on it’s side to make the “cave” and cover that with rocks and soil. We did this a couple weeks before Easter and on Palm Sunday, we planted the grass seeds. On Holy Thursday, we added a little ceramic lamb. On Good Friday, we added the three crosses on the top. Before the vigil Mass on Saturday, we put the stone in front of the opening and on Easter morning, we turn the stone over and it says “He is risen!” and we let the kids add flowers and ceramic bunnies to the grass that’s grown. It’s was kind of fun with young kids and a good way to teach them about Holy week and what we are celebrating. There’s lots of photos online if you are interested.
 
An excellent book that I would recommend is The Little Oratory by Leila Lawler. She writes about how it was so confusing as a new convert to figure out all the devotions, activities, seasons etc of the Liturgical Calendar and and how to pick and choose what to do. She gives very good advice on how to navigate it all.

Here’s the link. The reviews will help you decide if this is something that would be helpful.

 
Your story about the Advent calendar reminded me of one we used to get every year. It’s produced by Dumb Ox Publications. (Reference to St. Thomas Aquinas.) There is a sheet that has a stable and a bunch of numbers, with some circles with words at the top. Each day another piece is added to the stable. December 1 is the star. The 2-14 of December sees animals added. Each piece has a short prayer on the back. On the 15th St. Joseph is added, and on the 16th Our Lady is added. The 16th is also the start of the Christmas novena. There are 9 coloured star stickers in the kit. Each day after the novena is prayed (prayers included in the kit) a star is added. From the 17-23 the “O” antiphons are added. These are the circles at the top. They’re stickers so the words are written on the sheet. On the 24th the angel is added and the Christmas novena is complete. The 25th sees the Christ Child in the manger added to complete the scene.

The same company also produces a 12th Night calendar.
 
  • Build a Christmas nativity progressively since the beginning of Advent. Ending the process at the Epiphany with the addition of the wise men.
  • Sometimes watch some cartoons on the Nativity or the Bible’s stories the 25th December.
  • We have an advent calendar, but it was a secular version with santa clauss.
  • Fasting from meat on fridays, Ash wednesday, and Holy Friday
  • My mother remerber her father made the invisible sign of the cross on every new bread with the knife, before the cut it. My father have done it one time.
 
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I remembered a Lenten thing I used to do as a kid. The Catholic school would send home a little cardboard box “bank” for us kids to collect pennies, change etc during Lent and then at the end of Lent on a particular day we brought our boxes in and the teacher tallied up all the money we had saved from our allowance, gotten our family to donate, etc. and sent it all to the missions, for food to feed hungry children (we were told). It was a way to get kids involved with the idea of sacrificing for Lent and the fact that other people didn’t have as much to eat as ourselves. They would keep track of how much money each classroom raised.
 
Here are some “day to day” traditions I grew up with:

Make the sign of the cross when passing a Catholic church, a cemetery, or when I hear sirens and make a short mental prayer–“Jesus in the most blessed Sacrament, I adore you”, “Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord” “Lord, please help those in trouble and danger”.

Bless each family member as they leave the house (make a sign of the cross on their forehead… my husband and I do this to each other all the time) or have a holy water font by the front or back door.

Grace before and after meals!

Family rosary or prayer every night and/or morning

Consecrate your family to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and enthrone his image in your home. Invite a priest to come for dinner and do the enthronement (or invite family and friends to share in the event… it may encourage them to do the same!)

Occasionally (if schedules allow) invite your parish priest or deacon to dinner or lunch. It doesn’t have to be a fancy meal. Our kids have grown up accustomed to having Father show up for dinner once or twice a month. Even if it’s only once a year (because depending on the size of the parish, Father may not have time or may have a lot of invitations) it makes Father feel appreciated and the family grows closer to him. Always ask him for his blessing before he leaves and have the family gather for it… this is always a wonderful way to end the visit!
 
A tradition that we adopted after we entered the Church was the practice of blessing our child.

Every time he left for school or for an event, every night before bed, I would trace the sign of the cross on his forehead and say “May God be with you”.

When he was a great big teenager with long hair, he would still stoop over before he left (if I was absentminded and forgot). Over the years, his good friends would stay over and they would also ask for a blessing 🙂
 
TheLittleLady said:
Every time he left for school or for an event, every night before bed, I would trace the sign of the cross on his forehead and say “May God be with you”.
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That’s lovely!

We do something similar with holy water with our kids, who are all still little. I hope that when they are big they won’t think they’ve outgrown it!

One family tradition we have begun recently is a litany of our “family saints” as part of our bedtime prayers. Each member of the family names their own saints (their name saints, saints whose feasts fall on their birthdays, confirmation saints, etc) and then we ask for prayers from our parish patron, the saints of the day, anything we’re dealing with that day (e.g. St. Blaise if we’ve got colds, St. Christopher if we’re traveling), and our guardian angels. We also consider the Holy Family to be our family patron, so we ask for intercession from St. Joseph and the Blessed Virgin at the end. 🙂
 
I love all of these very much. Thank you all for your very thoughtful replies!

Christmas has always been my favorite holiday. Now it’s even more special because it lasts a lot longer!
 
Yeah, my mother started a tradition of hiding one gift that wouldn’t be found until Jan 6 when we took the Christmas tree down. She would not take the tree down earlier - we got an artificial tree so there was no issue of tree drying out or needing to be thrown away by a certain day. The gift would be hidden under the base of the tree or someplace like that.
 
They were called “rice bowls” when we did it too. Even had pictures on them of kids eating rice. Interesting that after 45 years they still call them that.
 
What’s really interesting is that in 45 years, they haven’t figured out a way to make them so the coins don’t constantly slide out the bottom.
 
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