{"id":18306,"date":"2017-12-14T10:16:36","date_gmt":"2017-12-14T16:16:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/?p=18306"},"modified":"2017-12-14T10:16:36","modified_gmt":"2017-12-14T16:16:36","slug":"we-celebrate-santa-lucia-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/2017\/20171214-18306.htm","title":{"rendered":"We Celebrate Santa Lucia Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Was I six, seven, eight when I first read Kirsten’s Surprise<\/em> (of the American Girls collection) and decided I desperately wanted to celebrate Santa Lucia Day?<\/p>\n

I’m not sure exactly when it was, but it was decades ago. For decades, I’ve been waiting for a chance to celebrate Santa Lucia Day. <\/p>\n

Now, I know I tried to celebrate at least once growing up – I remember finding a white gown at a used store and hemming it up so my little sister could wear it for Santa Lucia Day. But, in general, I was (am) full of enthusiasm – and my siblings were less-than-willing participants in my schemes.<\/p>\n

So I waited. <\/p>\n

I waited until I had a captive audience – children who have little choice but to participate with my schemes.<\/p>\n

This year, in other words.<\/p>\n

I found a picture book that mentions Santa Lucia Day and checked it out of the library. We unwrapped and read Hanna’s Christmas<\/em> by Melissa Peterson (illustrated by Melissa Iwai) together on Sunday.<\/p>\n

On Monday, we cut out a Santa Lucia crown for Tirzah Mae, covering it with construction paper holly leaves and cardboard candles. We cut out a pointed star boy hat for Louis, too; but he refused to wear it. He wanted a crown like Tirzah Mae’s. So he got a crown too, covered with blue construction paper stars. Tirzah Mae wore her crown to our 40 week prenatal appointment.<\/p>\n

Celebrating Santa Lucia Day<\/p>\n

She wore her crown all day long Tuesday, proclaiming herself to be “like Hanna”. She requested re-read after re-read after re-read of Hanna’s Christmas<\/em>. Occasionally, Louis tried to grab Tirzah Mae’s crown, so we got his out for him.<\/p>\n

Tuesday evening, I dared labor to start by arranging canned cinnamon rolls onto a cookie sheet in a wreath shape and placing a dollop of cherry pie filling in each. I’d contemplated baking them in advance, so we could still eat them if labor started and I wasn’t prepared to bake them in the morning – but I decided on the dare instead.<\/p>\n

My body feinted, but didn’t take the dare. Daniel baked the rolls while I napped after a long night of what I had hoped was the beginning of labor. <\/p>\n

We woke the children, put on their crowns, and ate our cinnamon rolls (Mental note: yes, doing the cans was a wise move relative to the uncertainty over baby – but I’m never buying canned cinnamon rolls again. They were gross! But the kids and Daniel still enjoyed them, so we’re all good.)<\/p>\n

The beginning of what I hope will be a long tradition of celebrating Santa Lucia Day. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Was I six, seven, eight when I first read Kirsten’s Surprise (of the American Girls collection) and decided I desperately wanted to celebrate Santa Lucia Day? I’m not sure exactly when it was, but it was decades ago. For decades, I’ve been waiting for a chance to celebrate Santa Lucia Day. Now, I know I … Read more We Celebrate Santa Lucia Day<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18306"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18306"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18314,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18306\/revisions\/18314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}