How to Celebrate Catholic Feast Days with Your Family

When you start your own family, it’s both exciting and overwhelming to create your own traditions. How should you celebrate holidays? The way your family did? The way your spouse’s family did? Should you create something entirely new?

This struggle can be even more amplified when it comes to celebrating Catholic feast days (beyond the major celebrations of Easter and Christmas.). A lot of families don’t observe these additional feasts at all. It may be an entirely new concept to you. So, where do you begin? This post offers a compilation of ideas and resources to help you get started.

Why Celebrate Catholic Feast Days?

Before diving in, it’s important to understand the why behind this practice. Why celebrate feast days in the first place?

The Church, in her wisdom, gives us an abundance of reasons to celebrate. Living liturgically helps us to focus on things above, to lift our gaze to heaven, the saints, and the angels.

Celebrating feast days allows us to look beyond ourselves and realize we are part of something much, much bigger than us. We are members of a universal Church. We aren’t alone in our walk. A communion of saints cheers for us from heaven. The mother of God prays for us. St. Michael the Archangel fights alongside us.

These feast days not only remind us that we are not alone, but also give us something to anticipate. The importance of this should not be understated. By looking forward to, planning, and preparing for these celebrations, we cultivate the virtue of hope. And by sharing in our preparations and celebrations with loved ones, we are evangelizing. What a beautiful thing!

Which Feasts to Celebrate?

It’s tempting to dive in and start celebrating every feast day from the get go. I urge you not to do this. Start with a few, and celebrate them well.

So, which ones should you choose?

• Family Devotions: If your family has a special devotion to a particular patron saint, celebrating their feast day is a natural starting point. For instance, St. Gianna Beretta Molla is dear to our family. Since she was Italian, we might honor her on April 28th (her feast day) with a special breakfast of zeppole or a pasta dinner.
• Baptism Anniversaries: Discover the baptism dates for everyone in your family and celebrate these days like birthdays—because they are! See which saint’s feast day falls on or near that date and get creative by incorporating something about them into your celebration. Inspired by Around the Year with the Von Trapp Family, we gift a religious item each year on my children’s baptism anniversaries—perhaps a crucifix one year, a catechism the next, or a rosary. This way, by the time they move out, they’ll have a collection of items to create an altar in their new homes.
• Other Meaningful Feasts: Once you’re comfortable, consider adding a few more. Does anyone in your family share a name with a saint? That’s a perfect feast to celebrate. You could also observe feast days of Marian apparitions, the Archangels, St. Joseph, or your own parish’s feast day. The Church truly offers us no shortage of occasions to celebrate!

How to Celebrate?

Now that you have a few feasts to celebrate in your calendar, what do you do? You can go as small or big as you like, though I recommend starting small. Pick a few small things to do, and build on them as you have the capacity and desire. Below are some ideas to inspire you.

Food

Gathering around a special meal is the way we celebrate most special occasions. It only makes sense to do the same for feast days. They’re called feast days, after all!

You can prepare an elaborate meal like you would for Christmas or Easter. Or you can simply have a fun dessert. Feel free to be as plain and simple or as creative and extravagant as you wish.

• Nationality: What country is your saint from? For Our Lady of Guadalupe, you can make Mexican food. For St. Thérèse of Lisieux, prepare something French.
• Symbolic Ingredients: Getting even more creative, you can use special ingredients that symbolize saints. For example, rosemary is commonly associated with Mary, so you can make a rosemary chicken, throw it in your pot roast, or make these delicious shortbread cookies!
• Shapes: You can also arrange or cut your food into shapes that represent the saints. Think a cross on Easter, stars for Mary, or roses for St. Thérèse.
• More Inspiration: There are endless ways to get creative with food. You can incorporate certain dishes into the celebration, like Angel Food Cake for the Feast of the Archangels, or deviled eggs for a Josephite feast (St. Joseph, terror of demons).
• Simple Treats: Or, you can simply enjoy a bowl of ice cream or a special chocolate. Just choose something to set the day apart and make it feel special.

Prayers

Adding a special prayer to your feast day festivities is a great idea. It helps us to remember why you’re celebrating, and place your mind on things above. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• You can always attend mass; the highest form of prayer and leisure; an excellent way to honor a feast day.
• Praying the St Michael the Archangel prayer on Michaelmas/the Feast of the Archangels (September 29) is a great idea.
• You can pray a rosary (or a decade) on Marian feast days (or any feast day, really).
• You can say a Divine Mercy Chaplet on Divine Mercy Sunday or the Feast of the Sacred Heart.
• Recite the Litany of St. Joseph with your family on Josephite feasts. Your littles can color this free printable while you do.
• Buy Catholic prayer cards for your home altar like these polaroids from January Jane Shop, or these from Chris Lewis. There are all kinds of beautiful prayer cards available. Search and find a style you like.

Prayer Resource: The Catholic All Year Prayer Companion

Arts and Crafts

There are tons of Catholic arts and crafts activities you can do to celebrate feast days. If you are with adults, you can try assembling your own rosary or painting an icon. If you are with kids, you can print Catholic coloring pages or make rosaries out of fruit loops.

Another fun idea for adults and kids alike is to make a Mary Garden in your backyard. Place a statue of the Virgin Mary in a nice spot in your yard, then plant flowers around it. It will become a wonderful place of prayer and retreat for your family.

Something Special

To keep things really simple, just do something that sets the day apart. Eat dinner outside. Have a picnic. Eat your favourite treat. Have dinner by candlelight. Go out for brunch. Just pick something that will set the day apart from every other day, and do so in honour of the saint you’re celebrating.

Great Resources

Books: The Catholic All Year Compendium, Around the Year with the Von Trapp Family, Living the Seasons

Coloring Pages: Saint coloring pages, icon style coloring pages, more Catholic coloring pages

Crafts: Crafty Catholic moms has some great ideas.

The Role of Fasting: A Counterpart to Feasting

I feel it’s important to mention here another practice central to the Catholic faith: fasting. Jesus says “When you fast…” (Matthew 6:16), not if. Just as the practice of celebrating feast days has fallen away in modern times, so has the practice of fasting.

However, these two disciplines are deeply connected and complementary. Much as we cannot fully appreciate a sunny day without experiencing rain, or true joy without acknowledging periods of sorrow, our celebrations and feasts are often enriched and given deeper meaning when balanced by the practice of fasting.

(I’m planning a more detailed post dedicated to fasting soon, as it’s a practice that can be highly personal and deserves its own focus.)

You can decide with your family how you’d like to approach incorporating this discipline. Traditionally, Catholics have abstained from meat on Fridays—the day Jesus died—throughout the entire year, not just during Lent. This can be a great and meaningful place to start. Our family, for example, has a tradition of eating homemade pretzels on Fridays, which is our simple way of observing the day. If you’re looking for more meatless ideas, you can find a collection here.

Head over to Instagram to let me know how you celebrate feast days with your family!