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Showing posts with label Michelmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michelmas. Show all posts

Friday, June 7, 2019

Celebrating Michaelmas by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Celebrating Michaelmas by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

One of the optional fall holidays observed by Florence’s Waldorf School in Pacific Grove, California was Michaelmas on September 29th.

For children in an ecumenical school, Michaelmas was explained as overcoming obstacles to provide for your family and work on creative projects.

In religious terms, Michaelmas is the holiday where the archangel Michael defeats Satan in a war in heaven.

In Great Britain, Michaelmas is a banking holiday where everyone eats hot cross buns to prepare for the upcoming business year.  The English parents and a Hungarian teacher at Florence’s school made homemade hot cross buns that we would eat with hardboiled eggs and apples.

All of the parents who participated at Michaelmas had to be some sort of obstacle for the children, who were all Michaels trying to take care of their families.

One of the big obstacles was racing with hardboiled eggs in spoons to represent children.  If you dropped your egg, you had to start the race all over again.

The obstacle course I ran was apple bobbing in a large, metal basin as if it were Halloween.  The children got a little muddy in their angelic dresses, but loved getting their apple and eating after running around.

I thought the hot cross buns were cute with their dough cross of a different color on top of them.

As I ate, I thought it was great to celebrate a London banking holiday in unpolluted ocean air in Monterey County California.


By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books