St. Martins Day/First Snow

This past Sunday was St. Martins day, for those of you who don't know who he was, (like me 3 years ago) I will explain in a minute. Part of the celebration for St Martins is to make lanterns and parade through the neighborhood, or village, and sing songs. The traditional meal is goose.

So 3 years ago, Jesaiah's first year in kindergarten, we got a note about St Martins day and needing to send money for making lanterns. My first thought was, 'who was this guy Martin anyway why is he a 'saint' and why does he have a day?' So I did what any modern-day mom would do, I got on the internet and 'googled' him!

The story is something like this:
Martin was a Roman solidier, one winter as he was riding his horse he came across a poor begger lying in the snow. So Martin took his cloak and cut it in two with his sword and gave half to the begger. According to legend he dreamed that night that it was Jesus wearing the cloak, and Jesus introduced him to the Angels as 'Martin the Roman soldier who is not baptised, he has clad me.' Martin was baptised then as an adult. The legend as says that when the people wanted to make him Bishop he hid in a goose stall because he didn't want the position, but the geese were so loud they gave him away (hence goose for the meal).

The songs that we sing are about being lights and sharing, it is a really neat celebration. We walk through our neighborhood with all the kids from the kindergarten, this year with 1st and 2nd graders too on a different day, we stop under each street light and sing our songs. The kids carry paper lanterns with a candle inside. It is really pretty when they get out away from the lights and you see only the lanterns. After the walk there is a big bon fire and bread shaped like geese to share.

Every other year it is really cold, this was one of those years! At least it didn't snow on Tuesday when we were walking...it waited until today!
The kids were so excited to see the snow this morning.

The pictures are from both Monday (1st & 2nd graders) and Tuesday (kindergarten) and our first snow, the captions aren't working.