Just to add: Wikipedia has our calendar of saints and other feast days (these are things with fixed dates, unlike Easter or Advent), because I suppose Wikipedia has everything. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Roman_Calendar_of_1960 There are also four Ember Day weeks (fasting) and three Octaves (feasting!) scattered throughout.

Here is a quick overview of our liturgical calendar. We follow the old rite Catholic calendar, which has some differences from the new rite calendar. A nice book (which it sounds like may not be available to you) for families is The Year and Our Children http://www.amazon.com/The-Year-Our-Children-Celebrations/dp/1933184272. Advent Nativity Circumcision Epiphany Holy Family Candlemas Septuagesima (Pre-Lent) Ash Wednesday Lent Palm Sunday Maundy Thursday Good Friday Holy Saturday Easter Ascension Pentecost Trinity Sunday Assumption Christ the King All Saints All Souls

And right back at you likewise! Great Girl came home late last night and her sisters are over the moon. We got a tree at last, we made gingerbread dough, we lit the fourth candle on the wreath and sang O Clavis Davidica, all my children together. Peace and joy indeed!

Sure, so some of us will have Steve Perry singing in our heads for a month.

Note that Twelfth Night is January 5, not Epiphany itself, so plan your uproarious revelry accordingly.

Congratulations shukriyya on 52! Agreeing with the grown-up pleasingness of Winnie the Pooh. After you've lived long enough to meet a few Eeyores, it's much more amusing.

I realize I'm in serious danger of my recommendations being the kiss of death for books after Bel-Ami (I think there was satire, but in a dark understated French way); but Brigadier Gerard really is quite amusing and very light. Doyle's brave but vain and somewhat dense hero of the Napoleonic Wars makes for a fabulous vehicle for making fun of the French and English simultaneously. ETA: I found much of Bel-Ami hilarious; but Brigadier Gerard is funny in the way normal people find things funny. ETA2:The Awkward Age, which I'm reading now, is not at all funny, but is both difficult and creepy.

Austin has Dell Children's Hospital. http://health.usnews.com/best-hospitals/area/tx/dell-childrens-medical-center-of-central-texas-PA6740170 There are expensive places to live in Austin, but also less expensive places, particularly on the east side.

Great news for a glad Christmas. We all rejoice with you.

Austin. Lots of homeschoolers, lots of things going on; laid-back, liberal, university town.

I made the assumption that we all understood that protection is not absolute; and that a rhetorical appeal to religious practices we find objectionable does not refer to, for instance, criminal actions. I don't find it ridiculous to take seriously the principles of the first amendment. Since the founding of this country, it's been a person's right to say any damn fool thing he likes, and to hold his beliefs in freedom. And I am still bothered that we are not all of us more attentive to protecting those freedoms particularly in cases where we vehemently disagree. I leave others the last word.

Only because it's you, dear Eliana, and I will allow myself to pretend that there aren't already twenty-six pages in this thread. :) I want to take up your invitation and tease out a different strand. Generally people seem to be looking at the wedding cake case as an issue of religious exercise vs. antidiscrimination laws of general intent; and I do think that's interesting and probably more legally complex than is coming out in this discussion. But I find myself looking at it as a freedom of expression issue. And I have very robust views of freedom of expression: both its constitutional nature, and its public policy implications (the latter of which seems to disappear in these discussions). Freedom of speech and expression has been understood in our polity as broad enough to include both nonverbal and specifically artistic expression, and to include the right not to be forced to participate in expression. Naturally the application of this expansive reading of the first amendment is very fact-sensitive, particularly when other rights are impacted. So burning a flag cannot be prohibited, because it is nonverbal but clearly expressive, and politically expressive at that. And here we should pause and note that there's something of a hierarchy of expression, and our tradition has been to be particularly protective of expression that is political or religious, because of the prominence given freedom in those areas in our national history, and because of a shared understanding of how integral those aspects of public and private life are to individuals. Likewise a work of art cannot be censored by the state because of its content, putting aside issues like obscenity. And because we can't be forced to participate in expression, a publisher cannot be forced to publish a book against her will; a maker of custom t-shirts can't be required to make a t-shirt with a motto that the maker doesn't want to express; a parade organizer can't be required to include a float expressing a point of view which the organizer doesn't want to include. So coming to the cake. There is an easy (and I think already litigated) situation in which a baker can't be forced to produce a cake with a written message to which the baker objects. Regarding an actual hypothetical from earlier in this thread, I did in fact order a First Communion cake from a kosher bakery because of guests coming to the reception; and other than some initial uncertainty as to what the cake should look like--fortunately a Catholic employee there knew exactly how it should look--there was no objection at all; but it seems clear under our understanding of free expression that the bakery could have refused to bake a cake that had (say) a cross in the middle of it, as that would be a straightforward issue of the state's inability, even under antidiscrimination laws, to require speech by the baker. Trickier is the situation where the cake doesn't bear a direct expression--written or symbolic--but is arguably the commissioning of a work of art. A ghost-writer can't be required to write a book she objects to writing; I think we can all see that easily. An artist can't be required to paint a mural with content with which he disagrees. But one also can't be required to create a work of art at all, even one lacking clear verbal or symbolic expression, as this is still coerced speech. And I think this is the right conclusion under a robust theory of freedom of expression. So the question becomes, is the purchase of a wedding cake more like commissioning a mural, or more like buying a car? This is where it seems to become very fact-sensitive. Here are two easy, it seems to me, hypotheticals: (1) There is a binder showing a dozen styles of wedding cake. The buyer chooses one and orders it, specifiying any particular colors, messages, or decorations. While the baker could demur from writing "Bob and Bill, ad multos annos!" on the cake, and likewise refuse to put two groom figures on top--and again, I'm pretty sure other court cases have made clear that this is straightforward protection of the right not to be forced to express views with which one disagrees--he could not refuse to make the chosen cake if public accommodation laws required him to. (2) The bakery has no off-the-shelf cakes, but advertises that "Your wedding is as unique as you are, and your cake will be a unique confection reflecting your union; therefore I will work closely with you to create a one-of-a-kind work of commissioned art that embodies all that is most personal and important to both of you." While I think a lot of people might not like it, in that case it seems clear that the baker is advertising the cakes as an artistic product, and that the same protections that protect more conventional artists from expressive coercion would protect our hypothetical patisseur. Of course the actual situation will fall somewhere between those extremes, and the sorting out of facts so that the law can be applied is what courts are for. That said, it seems like it would have to be a pretty special situation for the baker to win, as (2) seems much less to be the case than (1). Now my understanding is that the baker's view would be something like this: although the cake per se may not be an expression of the reality or legitimacy of gay marriage, its presence at the reception for a gay wedding would be a coerced expression of his approbation for, or at least acquiescence in, such a wedding. While I'm sympathetic to this view--should an artist who designs installation art have to sell it to someone who wants to put it in a context that would fundamentally alter the meaning of the art?--I think this seems like a reasonable place to draw the line. A reasonable person could not draw the conclusion, from the presence at the reception of a Fred's Patisserie wedding cake, that Fred approves of gay marriage. The expression here is so attenuated that it seems clearly outweighed by the antidiscrimination laws. On the other hand, the above is why I think the New Mexico wedding photographer case was decided incorrectly, and I wish the Supreme Court had agreed to hear it. The courts have been clear that photography is an expressive art form, and this seemed to me like a straightforward case of public accommodation laws being permitted to trump the right not to be coerced in expression. That a wedding photographer is a necessary physical participant in a wedding, as a baker is not, I think strengthens the case to be made. I do think there's a religious freedom issue to be examined here. You and I both have reasons to be sensitive to laws that could potentially require us to choose between participating in commercial life and coerced participation in or presence at (even a vicarious presence) someone else's religious (even if just in our own eyes) ritual. And if the facts went that direction, as they seem to do in the photography case, I would want to be very careful about sorting out rights. But primarily, I see this as a case of freedom of expression, and I think the baker probably loses, but would not necessarily lose in all fact patterns. Finally, and this is not directed at you Eliana, I'm amazed by how the "sides" have lined up on this interminable thread. Freedom of expression and religion are nothing if they don't protect the speech we find the vilest and the religious beliefs and practices we find the most objectionable. Religious citizens of a democracy must have a deep and necessary commitment to arranging their lives as best they can to avoid friction between the common civic life of the nation and those things required by them of their faith. I would expect to see the proponents of gay rights scrupulously examining any potential infringement on the rights of expression and conscience that might arise from antidiscrimination laws; I would expect to see those with religious objections to gay marriage exercising their imaginations to think how religious believers might arrange their commercial lives so that Caesar may be rendered unto with a clear conscience. In my imagination, we are all on the side of our most cherished constitutional rights and civic order. Forgive me, in reading the above, any inexact or infelicitous expressions, incorrect assumptions, or outright errors of legal fact.

At Middle Girl's recommendation I read this week The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard, which was very amusing and surprisingly unknown given the huge Sherlock Holmes fan base. Pam, I'm glad you, um, enjoyed Bel-Ami! Right now I'm reading Henry James' The Awkward Age, which also seems to be about awful people of the nineteenth century, but more subtly than the outrageousness of Maupassant's characters. Thank you for keeping Wee Girl in your hearts. Doing much better as other parts of life move forward, including the imminent and long-anticipated Return of Great Girl and the anticipation of Christmas.

Not participating in this discussion per se; but this happened in my city, and involved people I knew, and that is not at all what happened. An abortion clinic was delayed in being built because local contractors organized a boycott. Construction work here is heavily hispanic and Catholic/Evangelical. There was no pressure from churches. Boycotts work in all directions. Leaving discussion now.

My girls have always gone for soft leggings plus Land's End pullover dresses, and none of them even have sensory issues; they're just so easy and comfortable. The consignment stores always seem to have them. A small young friend of mine with FASD and sensory issues has a lovely Chinese silk outfit, with beautiful embroidery on the outside but plain soft silk lining. Her mom said it was surprisingly inexpensive for how luxurious it looks.

(((dsmith))) I'm sorry it's such a difficult time right now.

Thank you for that. It's beautiful. Please keep all of us in your thoughts and prayers tomorrow (Thursday) evening, when the children will be singing the concert. One of Miss K.'s students, now grown, will be conducting, and some of us moms will be shepherding the younger children. Wee Girl has been practicing her songs, and wants to sing, so that's good. No interest in expressing her feelings in any way except occasionally saying how sad she is. Speaking more clearly but still not sleeping well; it all seems to catch up to her at night.

I just want to say that I love y'all. And I have done a ton of reading because I've been sitting up with Wee Girl while she falls asleep, which it turns out we both find comforting, and my reading light doesn't bother her. So I finished Dobie's Cow People, which I have to recommend as one of the best books about the real life of cowboys I've ever read. I'm going to have Middle Girl read it for our Texas history studies. The only caveats for children's reading is that there's one sexual vulgarity (and Dobie lets you know it's coming) and a gut-wrenching incident of barbaric abuse of a horse. Well, and people say hell and damn a lot, but that's barely cussing. With a glance at some of the Chat Board threads recently, here's my favorite cowboy saying from the book: "A world big enough to hold a rattlesnake and a pretty woman is big enough for all kinds of people." Middle Girl wants me to read Brigadier Gerard next. So.

No, you're right, of course I can't tell her that. Even an nt child of that age doesn't need to hear about these circumstances. Fortunately we don't do tv because it was on the news extensively. Oh no, we definitely have the shutting down under questioning thing going on. We have been having lots of hugging and listening; though mostly she just says "I'm sad." Good. I definitely am going to incorporate some drawing therapy; several people have mentioned how helpful it was for their children.

That's a good idea. I'm encouraged to hear art was helpful for your daughter, and I like the cooking idea too. Yes, I want her to be able eventually to think of Miss K. and remember how happy she was with her. That's a great idea. I think I'm going to share these ideas with the other choir moms as well. Definitely singing. Miss K. has a beautiful song of blessing that ends every concert. Yes, I agree; but then I haven't been very successful in putting up a not-sad front. I'm trying for calm and stable, i do assure her that her sadness is the right reaction, and that all the other children and parents are sad too. Thank you friends, for both the practical suggestions and the comfort offered. It looks like the final concert will go forward, which I think is the right move, though it's going to be hard in all sorts of ways.

Yesterday was horrible. In fact, in general this has been a horrible year, and I will be glad to see the back of it. I've mentioned that Wee Girl has issues, known to the insurance company billing office as severe anxiety (her therapist remarked after the first interview that this is the most anxious child she has ever seen) and selective mutism. One of the handful of non-family adults in her tiny world to whom she is able to speak at all, is her choir teacher, who has worked closely with her to help her overcome herself through singing. And her choir teacher was murdered on Saturday. So now we're down to two non-family adults that she will speak with. And she is devastated, and her speech has deteriorated, and she cried herself to sleep last night, and wet the bed. Of course she doesn't know the circumstances of her teacher's death, but there was no finessing the fact of it: their winter choir concert that wraps up the semester is/was this week, and it's all the local homeschool moms are talking about. There are some people in the world who are just givers, and who go about systematically making the lives of other people better. And that someone else could take all that away in a fit of rage just makes me so overwhemingly angry and sad that it's hard to know what to do with it. I am trying to keep that all in because signs of sadness and grief from me make Wee Girl very upset and anxious, and she has begged me not to be sad. Which is really hard but I am trying. We are dealing with the death through letting her talk about it (she got out some words about it last night) and through our faith's traditional prayers for the dead, and the ritualism of that seems to help; at least it gives her something she knows how to do. I will happily take any advice from the experienced about helping a very anxious child through this kind of thing.

For the hard-to-shop-for person on your list. Taxpayers paid $113,000 for each of these; yours now for only $8000! Merry Christmas, citizen. Please step to the side. http://www.ebay.com/itm/111519265986 This is not a political thread. Frankly, our country's willingness to stand up to the Terrorist Threat even if it means having to install pricey porno-scanners in every airport brings a tear of pride to my eye, and I don't want to hear anything negative about it. No, I want to hear how you will use your personal backscatter machine as part of your homeschooling family's educational, social, and/or personal life. Think outside the box, as it were.

Hm. I've got an Australian book called The Man Who Loved Children sitting around here somewhere, which I keep meaning to read.

And a merry one it was! Middle Girl did very well at her math competition today, fueled by nothing but a tangerine and half a chocolate santa. Nope! Any plague, pandemic, or unpleasant bug counts.

All I have to say on this topic is that, if someone brings up the subject, I say I'm religious but not spiritual. Which is not actually meant (entirely) facetiously. Back to books.... Family book report. For our end of the week treat, I took the littles to the discard bookstore, where Middle Girl dithered between Brontë(3)'s Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Richard Dana's Two Years Before the Mast. After reading the first chapter of each, she decided firmly on the sea adventure. That's my girl! Wee Girl is working slowly through Paddington at Large. She's very excited to hear that there is a new Paddington movie. Did anybody hear the NPR movie review by a UK immigration lawyer? It was very sweet. Apparently poor Paddington would be in serious legal trouble, as he was only fleeing a natural disaster. But the lawyer conceded that it's not clear how the law would apply to a bear. Dh is reading Lanark, a bizarre Scottish novel which appeared on one of Stacia's book list links as a must-read cult novel. This is the sort of thing he likes.