For many years now, I’ve spent a couple of days in November gathering family photos from the previous months that year and then create a calendar for the upcoming year for my parents, siblings, and in-laws on Shutterfly.  The calendar has become a treasured gift by my mom and mother-in-law as it contains memories of all of us together from the year – as we’ve traveled to see each other for weddings, baptisms, holidays, and other special events – as well as our birthdays, anniversaries, name days, and feast days.

Shutterfly has some nice features for customizing the calendar.  I place a picture of each person on their birthday, a photo of the couple on their anniversary, a photo of a cross on everyone’s name day, and then a photo pertaining to each of the major feast days.  I also mark the major fasts throughout the year in the calendar as well.

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This year, my nine year-old niece and I sat down at the dining room table and created a book for all of the cousins about their patron saints.  The idea came to me as I saw my niece zone out during Liturgy the Sunday before.  As my littlest one started to cry, I pulled my niece out into the narthex with me for a moment.

“Let’s play a game.  I want you to try and figure out something about each of the saints that are on the walls of the church.  Saints will hold something in their hands which tells us about their life.  If they are holding a cross, they were martyred.  Do you know what a martyr is? (She nodded yes.)  If they are holding a scroll, then they were a writer.  Their clothes will also tell you about their life.  Deacons, priests, and bishops will be wearing vestments.  Monks and nuns usually have their heads covered.  Kings and queens will usually have fancy clothes or a crown.  So, let’s go back inside and you look at all the icons and tell me about them after church.  Okay?”

She lit up!  She went from staring off into space to studying the saints surrounding us.  Before leaving the church that day, I asked her, “Do you want to help me make a book about all the cousins’ saints?  We can make it on the computer and then give it to all of them as a Christmas gift from you and me.”

I had her attention.  She instantly responded, “Yes!”

So we spent the better part of an afternoon finding an icon for each of the cousins and writing a short story about each of the saints.  My niece asked to summarize the stories I told her and typed it out herself on the computer in the Shutterfly program for creating books.  She titled the book, “The Saints and Their Abouts and Their Icons”.  Initially, I was going to try and convince her to change the title to something else but after thinking about it for a bit, I decided to keep it rather than try and convince her to write something else.  I wanted her to always think back fondly on our project together and treasure the learning that took place that day.  This was far more important to me that getting my way with a “snazzy” title.  Besides, she’s right – our book is about saints, their stories, and their icons.

We created a short introduction to icons in the beginning of the book.  I intend for this book to be volume 1 since my sister is pregnant with her first baby and two of my siblings have not had children yet.  I’ll elaborate on icons some more in the second volume.