November: All Saints. All Souls. Our Saints.

One of the things I like the best about raising kids is trying to incorporate religious traditions into their experience.   During the month of November Catholics remember our beloved dead we pray for them and ask them to pray for us.  We remember family members, friends, mentors the unofficial Saints in our lives.....we also remember the Saints who are official.

So here is what we are doing.

During the winter we tend to light a candle at the dinner table.  So having candles is normal.  This year we created our own Saint candles.   You might have seen candles like this:

It's a very traditional devotional candle.  You might find candles like this in a church or on a personal altar.  Inspired by devotional candles like this I printed a handful of coloring sheet about the lives of various saints.  The kids colored them and we glued them onto some jars therin creating our own devotional candles from Saints that we connect with.

Here is Joan of Arc

Here is Kateri Tekakwitha

We have been singing the litany of saints at our dinner table calling on our beloved dead,  calling on official saints, calling on the saints that we are name after with our candles lit we know that God hears the prayers of our hearts (of course she does she is embedded in the very fibers of our hearts) and also the community of saints prays with us.