Advent Saints- December Feasts Days To Celebrate With Kids

There are plenty of feast days to celebrate with Catholic kids during Advent to really enhance your time with your family and turn it towards the true meaning of the season. You can click each day (well, most of them anyway) to go to all of my resources about that feast day. You’ll find tons of crafts, activities, printables, and more for celebrating these Advent Saint feast days! I guarantee that when you start including Advent Saint traditions into your celebrations, your kids will look forward to them year after year! 🙂 

Advent Saints Craft

I have a set of printable Advent Saint ornaments, and I absolutely love them! This pack includes all 12 of the Advent Saints, and you can craft one ornament for each of them. The reason why this is so awesome is you can make each one on their actual feast day (meaning never more than just one at a time) and then hang them on the tree!!! (No craft clutter). These are a favorite for my kids year after year for sure! 

How To Draw Advent Saints

This also includes several of the Advent Saints, and it’s totally free! You can watch the How To Draw Advent Saints video here and draw along and don’t forget to subscribe to the Catholic Icing channel! 🙂 

Now, onto the individual Saint feast days!

St. Andrew, November 30

It is traditional for Catholic families to do a Christmas novena that begins on his feast day. My Advent Saint ornament pack includes St. Andrew with the Christmas novena. 🙂

Because St. Andrew was a fisherman, anything fish or fishing themed is perfect for this feast day! Check out my fish in nets snack– easy and delicious! Also, Jessica from Shower of Roses made some adorable St. Andrew cross cupcakes that you don’t want to miss!

St. Barbara, December 4

This is another fun feast day to celebrate during the Advent season! In Germanic speaking countries, it is tradition to cut a “St. Barbara’s Branch” from a tree that normally buds in the Spring. If you bring the branch inside, you can force the buds to bloom for Christmas! You can read more about St. Barbara’s branch and how to force the buds here. My St. Barbara ornament is holding a blooming branch!

St. Nicholas, December 6

Well jolly ol’ St. Nicholas is an Advent favorite for sure! But I don’t mean about him bringing your presents on Christmas… nope! I’m talking about him filling your shoes with chocolate coins on Dec 6! This has been a liturgical favorite at our house always, and one of the only feast days that my family celebrated when I was growing up. So this feast day has a special place in my heart.

Read all about how to celebrate the feast day of St. Nicholas here. From shoe stuffing, so books, to movies… you’ll find it all!

Advent Saint Printable Peg Dolls

I now have this set of printable peg doll wraps so you can easily make your own Advent Saint peg dolls. This is absolutely my favorite set of Saint peg dolls and perfect for celebrating Advent time. Grab your download here

St. Ambrose, December 7

Saint Ambrose is the patron Saint of candle-makers, so there are all kinds of ways to tie that into Advent! Some families like to use this day to decorate their own Christ candle, which goes in the middle of your Advent wreath during the Christmas season. This is a beautiful tradition!

St. Ambrose was also known as the “honey tongued Saint” so any recipe with honey or anything bee themed is another fun way to celebrate this feast day! You can find my round up for celebrating St. Ambrose Day here

Immaculate Conception, December 8

This is a holy day of obligation, so be sure to check your parish’s schedule for Mass! Many Catholics are confused about this day thinking it’s about Mary conceiving Jesus in her womb, when really is is about Saint Ann conceiving MARY in her womb. Because of this common misconception, I always give the kids actual St. Ann resources, and never do activities with a grown up Mary on this feast day. I have a coloring page that teaches the true meaning of the Immaculate Conception and my Advent Saint ornament does this as well. She is one of my favorites because you can see Baby Mary in there! 🙂

Find my post about celebrating the feast of the Immaculate Conception, along with my printables including a free coloring page!

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St. Juan Diego, December 9

This one is another that you don’t want to miss- it is super fun and there are tons of great resources for this day! Juan Diego was from Mexico, so many families choose to eat Mexican food on this day. You can make tilma crafts, read San Juan Diego books or even watch movies! Some families like to even dress up in costumes for this day. 

You can check out all of my resources for celebrating the feast of San Juan Diego here

Our Lady Of Loretto, December 10

When you refer to the holy house of Loretto, it refers to the house that Mary grew up in when she lived in Nazareth. A really fun way to incorporate this feast day into the holiday season is to build “Lady Of Loretto” gingerbread houses on this feast day! We like to make gingerbread houses out of cheap bird houses and glue on beads instead of candy. That way we can keep them and add onto our little village each year! We also like to go visit a local display of gingerbread houses for a competition. Always a favorite activity for the kids!

Our Lady, Queen of Angels, December 11

This feast day is the perfect excuse to make some beautiful Angel crafts this Advent season! You can check out my round up of Christmas angel crafts here

Our Lady Of Guadalupe, December 12

I combined my post about Our Lady of Guadalupe with St. Juan Diego since they go hand in hand, so see the post above to find the resources for her. 🙂

St. Lucy (Santa Lucia), December 13

This is another cherished feast day celebration at our house! The girls love to dress in white dresses with red ribbons tied around their waist, sing the Santa Lucia song, and serve yellow sweet rolls! Some years we make actual Saffron buns, other years we pop orange flavored cinnamon rolls out of a can, but regardless the kids always have a great time! 

You can find my post all about how to celebrate St. Lucy’s feast day here. Crafts, books, crowns, candles, recipes- you name it it’s over there!

 

St. John Of The Cross, December 14

Saint John of the cross was from the Carmelite order, so it may be fun and delicious to celebrate with some kind of caramelized treat. Yum! The scapular also came from this order, so you can bring that out to your feast day celebration table. 

St. Thomas, December 21

Poor Saint Thomas. I think since his feast day is so close to Christmas, he often gets forgotten. Also, wouldn’t it be the worst to live a life in dedication to Christ, and then go down in history for your weakest most doubtful moment? He really is an amazing Saint, and when he saw Jesus, he instantly fell and said “My Lord and my God”. Sound familiar? That’s right! It’s exactly what we say when the newly consecrated host is presented to us! 

Advent Saint Gingerbread Cookies

I usually do try to line up our gingerbread activities with a feast day and 2 perfect days would be the feast of Our Lady of Loretto and also the feast of St. Lucy! Gingerbread is very traditional on this feast day in Sweden. Sometimes we even make the cookies look like our actual Advent Saints! Below you can see St. Lucy, Our Lady of Guadalupe, and St. Nicholas all made from regular gingerbread men cookies.

Be sure to check out my book for living liturgically with your family, Weaving The Faith

You can find all of my resources for living the liturgical year organized month by month here!

More Advent Saint Resources

Also, you can find all of my Advent and Christmas resources for Catholic families here.

The Advent Christmas Planner- available from Catholic Icing