Martin's Day

One aspect of Waldorf education is the belief that it is important to give children opportunities both to celebrate and to experience times of reverence.  In order to accomplish this, schools and families celebrate some unique festivals. (Well, they're probably only unique to us North Americans.)  This weekend was Martin's Day, or Martinmas.  Martinmas is actually commonly observed in Europe.  The festival is in part to remember the legend of Martin of Tours.  Martin was a Roman soldier who gave part of his cloak to a beggar on a cold night.  Later that night, he dreamed that the beggar was actually Christ.  Martin devoted the rest of his life to caring for the poor.  The other part of the festival is to prepare for winter and the cold and darkness that will come and to symbolically gather strength and light for the months ahead.  In Germany, Martinmas is typically observed with Lantern Walks, and Waldorf schools and homeschool groups have adopted that tradition.  We traveled to another city to attend a Lantern Walk with our homeschool group.  This was actually the first time we had done anything with our group, as it is brand new, and we live too far to get involved more often.

 

 I thought it was sweet that Sariah took this picture of our nature table, with a picture of a little girl on a Lantern Walk.  Also, if you look carefully, you will notice that she has placed our wooden animals laying down covered with leaves and scarves to keep them warm for winter.

This week in school, in addition to our other studies, we took time to tell stories related to Martin's Day.  I told Dallin the legend of Martin of Tours.  I told Sariah a story about a girl who has shining eyes and a brightly lit lantern, and both her eyes and her lantern start to dim.  A traveler comes along and tells her that by traveling to the top of a very high mountain, she can get a spark of light from the sun to light her lantern.  That's the gist in a nutshell... it was a very fairy-tale-like story, but had such a deep symbolic meaning.  At least, I got out of the story that it was really about our journey here on earth, leaving our heavenly home and needing to rekindle our spiritual light.

We made lanterns to take on our lantern walk.  We made them out of glass jars, covered with watered-down glue, to which we affixed pieces of tissue paper.  Dallin insisted on making his lantern with big BYU letters. 

The Lantern Walk was an interesting experience.  The weather was extremely cold.  The first part of our journey, we actually had snow and saw several cars off to the side of the road.  I wasn't sure whether we should even attempt this, but by the time we were closer, we could see a bit of blue sky.  It didn't snow on us, but it was SO cold.  The kids were troopers, but I'm sure they would have had more fun if it hadn't been so cold.  Everyone brought soup to share, and there was storytelling, singing, and then a walk around a lake with our lit lanterns.

Doesn't this look say, "I'm DANG cold!!!!"?  Poor girl!

Preston was actually the warmest of all.  He was fine!  I was smart enough to dress him in long johns under his clothes.

All in all, I'm glad we went, though I wish it could have been a more pleasant experience for the kids.  When we got back to the car, we did talk about all the people in this world who don't have nice warm houses to go back to on cold nights like this.  I think it made an impression on the children.  We took canned goods to donate, but forgot to get them out of the car, so we will have to visit our local food bank.  I enjoyed meeting some of the other homeschoolers and found that many of my fears were nothing to worry about at all.  (I have been worrying about whether or not I would fit in...)