Martinmas and Veterans Day

From Wikipedia:

"St. Martin's Day (or Martinstag or Martinmas) is November 11, the feast day of Martin of Tours, who started out as a Roman soldier. He was baptized as an adult and became a monk. It is understood that he was a kind man who led a quiet and simple life. The most famous legend of his life is that he once cut his cloak in half to share with a beggar during a snowstorm, to save the beggar from dying of the cold.
That night he dreamed that Jesus was wearing the half-cloak Martin had given away. Martin heard Jesus say to the angels: "Here is Martin, the Roman soldier who is not baptised; he has clothed me."

Click here to read more about how different countries and faiths celebrate Martinmas.

We celebrated Martinmas by reading Boxes for Katje - I really want to add this book to our own collection - and giving clothes away to some friends and to Goodwill. We also made some homemade lanterns. I had planned on having us glue tissue paper inside of the jars, but well, that didn't quite happen. But we did put some homemade beeswax candles in the jars and lit them.

For Veterans Day, we talked about the connection to wars and soldies in the Boxes for Katje book, and we talked about different wars and how soldiers help us have freedom. We spent quite a bit of time talking about the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.

Next year, we are going to have goose for dinner too. We have Scandanavian ancestors and I thought it would be a nice connection to our heritage to add that to our Martinmas celebration. Of course, I've never cooked goose before. I'm hoping it isn't much more difficult than a turkey.