 ~ MRS. SHARP'S TRADITIONS ~  NOTE: The entire text below is taken directly from the book Mrs. Sharp’s Traditions. I cannot take credit in any form for the ideas and creativity on this page unless so noted. The book is written by Sarah Ban Breathnach and is currently out of print. If you can find a copy (the softcover version is called Victorian Family Celebrations), definitely grab it and run…and DON’T lend it to a friend because you’ll probably never get it back! "September arrives as one season ends and another begins. This is a month of contrasts: the family enjoys the last cookout of the year on Labor Day weekend, just as the leaves begin to turn colors and woolen sweaters are being taken out of storage for chilly mornings. It’s time once again to return to school and work. But autumn pleasures beckon us as well: maple leaf luncheons, nutting parties, crafts using Mother Nature’s bounty, and enjoying the autumn festival of Michaelmas as well as celebrating Grandparents’ Day." Preparing to go back to school can be one of the most pleasurable aspects of the summer, dear Reader, if you transform your preparations into family traditions. Make returning to school and "event" everyone looks forward to. Make an assessment of each child’s wardrobe ~ keep what still fits, pass down what doesn’t and then make a list of what needs to be bought. Try and plan to take each child shopping for his or her wardrobe on separate excursions. If you are planning to shop from mail-order catalogues, sit down with some milk and cookies and look through the catalogues together! If you sew, let your child pick out the patterns and fabric. And, of course, shop for the back-to-school supplies. Mrs. Sharp’s last tradition for our back-to-school shopping expedition is to stop off for either lunch or ice cream sodas to celebrate! Make the first day of school a special event by planning on serving the children’s favorite breakfast and by having the camera ready for picture-taking. Tuck something extra into the lunch box, such as a note with love and best wishes for a wonderful school year from Mother and Father. That evening plan on enjoying a festive dinner together with a special dessert and catch up on all the exciting news. Mrs. Sharp then presents the children with the school scrapbooks. On the first page they find mounted a picture taken that morning with a funny caption to start them off. Our family’s other successful back-to-school tradition includes reminding the children that we lay our clothing out the night before and re-establishing the front-door-basket system of organization. The door baskets – each one labeled with a name and one for each family member – are where the family places its books, hats, lunch money, etc. before retiring, so that there is no searching in the morning. Our children do grow up so quickly. Making the most of returning to school by helping them celebrate is a tradition no youngster should grow up without. A final note: During the last week of August and the beginning of September, many stores have sales on art supplies and stationery products. This is an excellent and economical time to stock up the Rainy Day Cupboard with craft items. At this time, I also purchase a plain artist’s sketchbook for each child, which will become the child’s school-days memory scrapbook for that year. Today Labor Day is primarily viewed as the official end of summer. Work is a recurring theme at Mrs. Sharp’s house these days and she suspects – with 50 million mothers of school-age children working outside their home – she’s not alone. Labor Day provides us with an opportunity to reflect on better ways for our family to work together. One practical tradition is a Labor Day annual review of family chores. With a new school year, we try to distribute different jobs to keep the household running smoothly. Household chores teach children valuable lessons that increase confidence and esteem. Mrs. Sharp also believes that when parents and children work together, these times also provide occasions for conversation on topics that might otherwise be difficult. It is far easier for older children to open up while drying a dish, folding clothes, or raking leaves. But the week before or after Labor Day also offers pleasurable opportunities for a parent/child field trip such as a visit to Father’s or Mother’s place of employment. Try to explain to them what it is you are attempting to accomplish each day. If you can arrange it, work-related field trips are more enjoyable on a regular workday, so that you can introduce the children to some of your colleagues. By bringing them to the place where you spend one-third of your life, they get a better sense of you as a person. A nice way to finish the trip is to take the children to the place where you eat lunch regularly. Another enjoyable Labor Day family tradition is to trace the work history of your family. Begin by interviewing the oldest member of your family to discover what types of work they and their parents did. As you trace the occupations of your own family, you will weave together fascinating threads of personal history. You might discover occupations in your family’s past that no longer exist. Mrs. Sharp keeps a special book about our family’s work history; each year we try to add one more relative’s story. Very soon, adding to this annual Labor Day project will become a treasured family custom and legacy, made all the more precious because you "worked" on it together. On the second Sunday in September comes Grandparent’s Day – a holiday which has only been formally observed since 1978. Mrs. Sharp believes it is a holiday that should be enthusiastically embraced. During the Victorian era, grandparents were a strong physical and psychological presence in the lives of their grandchildren. Today the traditional extended family seems to have disappeared with the dinosaurs. But one thing that has not changed since Mrs. Sharp’s day, and that is the vital link of love that binds the generations. We must understand one crucial premise: Never before has the natural role of grandparents been needed more. Grandparents offer their grandchildren a sense of stability in a rapidly changing world. The biological bond between grandparents and children must be kept strong through shared time and intimate contact. Selma Wasserman, author of The Long-Distance Grandmother: How to Stay Close to Distant Grandchildren (click here to order!), details some of the innovative ideas she’s successfully used to overcome the barriers of distance. These include special ways to use the telephone, audiotapes, captioned photographs, stories and small, inexpensive, and playful gifts that engage children in shared activites across the miles. Like all the suggestions in this unique resource, the reaching out to create a relationship between grandparents and children does not depend on a special occasion, even one like Grandparents’ Day. What matters is a grandparent’s longing to be a part of their grandchild’s life and then doing it. These are perfect Indian-summer days and for Mrs. Sharp’s family, it’s time for such season pleasures as apple gathering, cider pressing, hayrides and scarecrow making. Autumn’s work also beckons us: raking leaves, preparing the garden for winter, stockpiling wood in addition to the regular jobs of grocery shopping, laundry and so on. The family’s free time together seems so short; the chore list so long. But Mrs. Sharp has discovered the secret for transforming any chore into an opportunity for family togetherness…it’s called Planning. For example, this is our plan for a fall Saturday. After breakfast, everyone in the family has an hour’s worth of household tasks. With each person cleaning a different part of the house, in a short time an entire day’s work is completed. Next, we head outdoors together to tackle Mother Nature’s job list. For the luncheon, the children collect large maple leaves to make party crowns. Use 6-7 leaves of approx. the same size for each crown. They should be soft and pliable. Remove the stems, but do not discard them. Take two leaves and slightly overlap them, then join the two together by using the stem much the same way you would a straight pin. Continue doing this until you have made a suitable length to surround the head, like a crown. Next, the children make leaf drawings. Place tracing paper on top of a leaf and rub crayons gently over the paper. The shapes and patterns of the leaves will become visible, creating "stained-glass" nature pictures. Now it’s time for lunch, served outdoors. A hearty autumn vegetable soup is served in scooped out, slightly underripe pumpkins. Mrs. Sharp also serves brown-break sandwiches cut into the shape of leaves and acorns using cookie cutters. For dessert we have butter pecan ice cream and apple tart. After the family has feasted, everyone is ready for an old-fashioned nutting party – a leisurely walk in the countryside where we collect an assortment of different nuts. (If necessary, Mrs. Sharp will hide store-bought nuts along with the chosen party route, in advance of the walk.) The child who fills his or her basket first is called "the little brown squirrel"; the child who has the largest assortment of nuts becomes "the little red squirrel," and the rest of the children become "little grey squirrels." After the game, we place the nuts near the trees for the real woodland creatures and retire to a blanket to tell stories about the squirrels’ habit of gathering and saving. We can learn from our children who go on nature walks and bring home their "treasures" to display. Let your eyes roam the woodside looking for treasures like your little ones. Victorian women adored decorating their homes with natural materials and during the autumn months would create large and elaborate bouquets using leaves as the foundation. Select large branches, when the leaves have first turned their beautiful colors and before they start to fall. To preserve the branches and leaves, do this: Split the stems of the branches about 3 inches from the bottom; stand them in a bucket of warm water for several hours. If any of the leaves begin to curl, remove them. Then prepare a solution of glycerine (available at pharmacies) and water by combining one part glycerine with two parts water. Bring the solution to a boil, simmer gently for ten minutes, and let it sit until completely cool. Cut the bottom of your branch stems at a very sharp angle and stand your branches in the mixture, storing the container in a cool, dark place until all the glycerine mixture has been absorbed. This will take about a week to ten days. When you first notice tiny beads of glycerine forming on the leaves, remove them from the solution, wipe down the leaves with a damp paper towel, and dry thorougly. What else do we see? Bunches of goldenrod, rich-brown catttails, vines of bright-orange bittersweet berries, andthat wonderful old-fashioned favorite, the honesty plant with its white, satiny pods. Collect them to have a glorious dry bouquet that will keep in winter without fading. Collect nuts and pinecones, for with a bit of glue, felt pieces and sheep’s wool, you can create tiny animals, autumn fairies and simple gnomes for the children to play with. Acorns make tiny animals when you glue two together, adding a bit of black felt for a tail and feet. Acorns also make charming tiny fairy tea sets when you separate the cups from the nut. Take pinecones and transform them into woodland gnomes with felt capes and cone-shaped hats. Add a bit of sheep’s wool to use for the beard. To make autumn fairies: take colored tissue paper (in autumn colors) and twist a little shape around a tiny wad of cotton batting or sheep’s wool for the head. Now glue on wings of the honesty seeds and place them into a half walnut shell. Even the most jaded youngster will delight in the limitless possibilities of seasonal handicrafts once he is introduced to the bounty of Mother Nature’s supplies. It has been Mrs. Sharp’s observation, however, that often parents seem reluctant with the notion of going back to nature for their children’s diversions. That is until they discover a rich resource of imaginative pastimes in two marvelous books from England. The first, Festivals, Family and Food (click here to order!) by Diana Carey and Judy Large, takes a young family on a journey throughout the year to celebrate seasonal festivals with over 650 activites. It’s companion volume, The Children’s Year (click here to order!), fosters an awareness and appreciation of the four seasons through enchanting craft projects for the famiy to enjoy together. On September 29, Mrs. Sharp’s family observes the first of the autumnal festivals – Michaelmas – which is the feast day of St. Michael the Archangel. This is an ancient harvest festival still celebrated in the Celtic provinces from Cornwall in England to Brittany in France. Legend tells us that England’s patron saint, St. George, was the Archangel Michael’s earthly representative. In heaven St. Michael was the angel who threw Lucifer out for his treachery, and on earth St. George was famous for slaying dragons and rescuing princessess. In Victorian English homes, the celebration of Michaelmas meant the children reenacted the legend of St. George and the dragon. (Kris’ note: There is a most splendidly illustrated book by the title St. George and the Dragon (click here to order the hardback version ….or …. click here to order the paperback version). It is retold by Margaret Hodges and illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman (also a 1985 Caldecott Medal Book!) and my daughter loves the story!) Modern children will enjoy Mrs. Sharp’s tradition of making a sweet dough dragon, much better than slaying a sibling. Create him with refrigerated dough, available at grocery stores, and fill his stomach with apples and dried fruit. Use sliced almonds for his scales. By teatime our dragon is removed from his fiery red lair to be slain and consumed along with a selection of delicious blackberry jam. This is the last time of th year we will enjoy blackberry jam, for legend has it that after the Devil was thrown out of Heaven he landed in the blackberry brambles. After Michaelmas, it is said the blackberries turn bad! Over tea we tell the tale of St. George, and Mrs. Sharp ceremoniously lights the parlor hearth, signaling autumn’s true arrival. For a marvelous resource that not only explains to modern children the origins of old festival days such as Michaelmas, but how they are celebrated around the world today, Mrs. Sharp recommends the book Follow the Year: A Family Celebration of Holidays (out of print) by Mala Powers. Soon, the children are lost in play, as knights and princesses in castles far, far away. Mrs. Sharp lingers over her cup of tea, savoring the contentment that always comes when she makes a special effort to keep an old tradition alive. WHERE DO YOU WANT TO GO?
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