I realize the Christmas season is over, but I wanted to do a post on this year's annual Epiphany party and the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord, mainly so that I could remember how we celebrated these feast days and to add these posts to my A Slice of Liturgical Life page.

On Sunday, January 3, 2016, the Catholic Church celebrated the Feast of the Epiphany, but the traditional date for the Epiphany is January 6.  Our family celebrated this year's Epiphany with some traditions and then this past weekend we hosted an annual Epiphany party.  A few homeschooling and non-homeschooling friends and their children came for a potluck dinner and a time to fellowship.

During the party we turned our Advent tree into an "Epiphany tree" where we hung the 3 Wisemen Ornaments we made last year  (ornaments were printed from Catholic Icing) and laminated star ornaments where I wrote each family's name in attendance on each star.  Each family chose a star on the tree and then this would be the family they would pray for in 2016.   At the base of the tree was The Christmas Star from Afar wooden nativity set that I did a review on at the beginning of Advent. 


Also at the base of the tree was real frankinsence and myrrh that I received as a gift from Anna-Marie several years ago at Life's Adventures.  I also made little Epiphany "goody bags."  In each ziplock bag, I put some Hershey kisses, chocolate gold coins (to represent the Wise Men bringing gifts of gold to Baby Jesus), a piece of white chalk and a copy of Chalking the Door: Blessing Your Home for Epiphany.  Each family could then go home and bless their home with the chalk and prayers that I printed out for them.

This was the first year we did a simple celebration for the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord.  The feast of the Baptism of our Lord is celebrated on the Sunday after January 6th (Epiphany).  So this year it was on Sunday, January10th.

After seeing the Baptism of the Lord River Jordan Dessert on Catholic Cuisine, I decided to give it a try.   Here's what I used for the dessert:


After lunch on Sunday, our family discussed the meaning of our own baptisms and each child lit their baptism candle that they each received at their baptism as infants.  We discussed how our baptisms remove original sin, so why did Jesus get baptized (since He is God)?  I then read out loud to my family The Baptism of our Lord and the Sacrament of Confirmation that answers this question and relates this feast day to the Sacrament of Confirmation.  It was a blessed time!

I found an image on Google of John the Baptist baptizing Jesus and printed it out and laminated it before sticking them in the "River Jordan".

And the next post I'm planning on publishing relates to the fun and big New Year's goal I'm working on and the title of the post will be something like "More Jogging, Less Blogging..."  So that gives you a big hint what I'm doing for my goal ;-)

Stay tuned!