The Season of Nativity
As I prepare to enter into the preparatory season of the Nativity Fast, I began by organizing the second notebook in my Cycles of Grace system. I have been working on this project for the better part of a year and want to encourage those who have contacted me. This system is best approached as a long-term project. Organizing a set of five household notebooks meant to cycle through the Church Year in one sitting is unrealistic. Don't despair of the slow progress. Slow and steady will see the job through.
At this point I have four of the five notebooks completed. One of those needs to be reorganized when the season approaches. It's not even close to being what it needs to be in order to be helpful to me. I am sure that I will always have to be open to making adjustments if I want these notebooks to help in simplifying the details of daily life. Tools should assist us, not master us.
Below you will find an explanation of the organization of Notebook Two. As we live through the season of the Nativity I will add anything that I have omitted. Follow-up posts in this series are likely, as I can't imagine getting this right the first time around.
Along with the notebook described below, I have included nine additional files, the labeling of which are identical to those accompanying Notebook One. Please refer to that post for descriptions of each file:
- Weekly Calendars
- Papers to Grade
- Copies
- Receipts
- Pending Bills
- To Be Filed
- Recipes
- Correspondence
- Notes
Notebook Two: The Season of Nativity
- Nativity Fast Menu
Our weekly menu for the time of the Nativity Fast is found behind the first tab of the notebook. The menu includes a list of three meals per day for each day of the week. I will share this menu, recipes and grocery list before the fast begins.
- Nativity Fast Recipes
I organized my recipes for our Nativity Fast Menu behind this tab. For many years they have remained unorganized in a folder. Some were printed from the internet, some were hand-written on scratch paper, others were photocopies of recipes shared by friends. As I prepare for the fast I have taken the recipes we will be using and created a series of recipe pages. Each page includes a symbol reminding me of the place of the meal during a fast. For example, a recipe for a strict fast day is labeled with a Cross on the top, right corner of the page. A recipe permitted during wine and oil days is marked with a symbol of grapes and a recipe for a fish, wine and oil day includes a symbol of a fish. My hope is that this will alleviate the need to skim through the list of ingredients on each recipe, wondering which recipes are appropriate on any given day.
- Nativity Fast Grocery List
I have printed out several copies of our grocery list for the Nativity Fast. The list includes everything necessary for preparing the recipes on the seasonal menu, as well as additional space to write in miscellaneous items. Each week I take a quick inventory of the refrigerator and pantry and mark off what we don't need before heading to the store.
- Thanksgiving Menu
With our bishop's blessing we break the Nativity Fast for one meal on Thanksgiving Day, giving thanks with others for God's bounty. I have our family's traditional Thanksgiving Menu filed behind this tab.
- Thanksgiving Recipes
I have collected the recipes necessary for cooking the meals on the Thanksgiving Menu behind this tab. I will share these as well as we enter the month of November. I also have a day by day to-do list, spreading out the work of the meal over the week. This list tells me what needs to be done on each day of Thanksgiving week (many parts of the meal can be prepared ahead of time) in order to avoid spending a full and exhausting day in the kitchen.
- Thanksgiving Grocery List
This shopping list includes all of the ingredients necessary for preparing the Thanksgiving Meal. Knowing what we will eat and having my recipes in one place simplifies the planning necessary for hosting a holiday meal. It is also less of a distraction during the period of the fast. Having a shopping list put together ahead of time makes the week run much more smoothly, making it much less of a disturbance during the prayerful time of the fast.
- Holy Supper
I plan to write a post closer to the feast of Nativity about the Orthodox family meal of Holy Supper prepared for the Eve of Nativity. The menu and recipes are filed behind this tab.
- Nativity Menu
- Nativity Recipes
- Nativity Grocery List
I treated our menu, recipes and grocery list for the feast of Nativity in the same way that I have organized those for our Thanksgiving Meal. Behind this tab I have also filed any recipes for the season of Nativity, such as Vassilopita for the feast of St. Basil on January 1.
- Winter Menu
- Winter Recipes
- Winter Grocery List
At this time, these tabs are empty. My hope is that I will have a Winter Menu created before the fast begins. It would make life much more simple to transition out of the festal season and into a seasonal menu if the work was done ahead of time. I don't see myself having much time to do this during the busy days of Nativity. Hopefully I will be able to work on this over the next few weeks. I have been a homemaker for 15 years now. I am sure that I can come up with a rotation of winter recipes, enjoyed by our family, to be used each year.
- The Entrance of the Theotokos ~ November 21
This tab keeps the many printed resources for the feast of the Entrance that I have collected over the years. Explanations of the feast, festal hymns, and an explanation of the festal icon are examples of the papers stored here.
The same type of paperwork is filed behind the next three tabs:
- Nativity ~ December 25
As we enter into the time of the Nativity Fast, I will move our gift-giving list from the Preparing to Prepare tab of Notebook One to the Nativity tab in Notebook Two.
- Theophany ~ January 6
- The Meeting of Our Lord ~ February 2
The great feast of The Meeting of Our Lord in the Temple concludes the events celebrating the Nativity of Christ. In some years we will celebrate the feast of the Meeting before Triodion begins, in other years it will be within the season. (This year the Meeting will be celebrated during Triodion, as the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee falls on January 24 in 2010.) This tab will more than likely make an appearance in notebooks two and three in order to accommodate the calendar changes from year to year.
The following tabs are home to the print-outs of the lives and hymns of the saints, primarily from the OCA website. Although I am sure that each family's list will differ, our list includes:
- Saints of the Season: November
The November list only includes the lives and hymns of the major saints whose feasts fall after the beginning of the Nativity Fast.
Holy Apostle and Evangelist Matthew; St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow; the Great Prince Alexander Nevsky; the Greatmartyr Katherine of Alexandria; St. Clement of Ochrid, Equal-to-the-Apostles; St. Innocent of Irkutsk; Holy Apostle Andrew, the First-Called
- Saints of the Season: December
The New Hieromartyr Alexander; Venerable Sabbas the Sanctified; St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, Archbishop of Myra in Lycia; Conception by Righetous Anna of the Theotokos; Venerable Herman of Alaska, Wonderworker of All America; the Blessed Empress Theophania; the Holy Prophet Daniel and the Three Holy Youths; the Martyr Sebastian and His Companions at Rome; St. John of Kronstadt; the Synaxis of the Most-Holy Theotokos; Protomartyr Stephen
- Saints of the Season: January
The Circumcision of Christ; St. Basil and his mother St. Emmelia; St. Seraphim of Sarov; the Synaxis of St. John the Baptist; St. Gregory Bishop of Nyssa; St. Theophan the Recluse; Venerable Theodosius the Great; St. Sava, Archbishop of Serbia; St. Nina of Georgia, Equal-to-the-Apostles; Venerable Godbearing Anthony the Great; St. Athanasius the Great; St. Cyril of Alexandria; St. Mark, Archbishop of Ephesus; Venerable Euthymius the Great; Venerable Maximus the Confessor; Blessed Xenia of St. Petersburg; St. Gregory the Theologian; Translation of the Relics of St. John Chrysostom; Venerable Ephraim the Syrian; St. Isaac the Syrian; Synaxis of the Three Hierarchs: Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom
- Saints of the Season: February
Just as the file for the great feast of the Meeting of Our Lord, this file of feasts will rotate between notebooks two and three, depending on the moveable dates of Triodion.
Righteous Godbearer Simeon and Anna the Prophetess; Repose of St. Theodosius, Archbishop of Chernigov; Greatmartyr Theodore Stratelates; Prophet Zacharias; Venerable Simeon the Myrrhgusher; St. Cyril, Teacher of the Slavs; First and Second Finding of the Honorable Head of St. John the Baptist; St. Raphael, Bishop of Brooklyn
- Learning Through the Year of Grace
Hopefully someday this tab will be home to Learning Through the Year of Grace-style lesson plans for the Sunday Gospel readings.
- Reading Through the Year of Grace
Anna and I have made a lot of progress on our Reading Through the Year of Grace project. We hope to get page organized and shared very soon. The list of books for this period of time will be filed behind this tab.
- Jesse Tree
The Orthodox Classical Homeschool group created an Orthodox version of the Jesse Tree from a set that I had originally posted on Serendipity a few years ago. The group gave our family a gift of the fifty-two ornaments and I have stored our daily readings behind this tab. If you haven't seen this Orthodox version of the Jesse Tree, follow the link above and check it out. It differs from Protestant and Roman Catholic Jesse Trees in that the readings and ornaments lead up to the feast of Theophany (the Baptism of Christ) rather than the western celebration of Epiphany (the visit of the Magi). It is a beautiful project that reflects the hymnology of the Orthodox Church during the seasons of Nativity Fast, Nativity and Theophany. We were so blessed to be recipients of the generosity of this group of women.
Notebook, file folder and clipboard design
Cupcakes Green
by Vera Bradley
