Feast of Saint Basil

We started using a calendar this year with stickers for all the feast days of the church.

Each day E has been putting the new sticker on and practices reading the day of the week and the month. She's also learning about each saint as we come to their feast day.

Today we celebrated the feast of St. Basil who is one of the great saints in the history of the church. You can read more about him at Catholic culture. From the same website, we read about the Greek custom of baking a cake (called a Vasilopita) in honour of St. Basil, in which you hide a silver coin. Whoever finds the coin is believed to be especially blessed for the next year.

We had fun baking the cake together. Because I was nursing a fussy baby, E got to do almost all of it herself with me instructing from my chair. She measured, poured, cracked eggs, and stirred. In fact, she did such a good job that I think I need to give her more jobs in the kitchen.

We were a little worried about how the cake would turn out, because it rose pretty high (with the yeast), but in the end it was beautiful!

E was the lucky one who got the coin in her piece of cake. She was so excited. I told her she could keep the money and go buy something, or save it up for something bigger, but she has decided that she is going to give it to the poor like St. Basil, and is now going through the house trying to find money laying around so she can give even more. Her generous heart never ceases to amaze me.