Martinmas

Last Wednesday, 11 November 2015, it was Martinmas. 

This is the day St. Martin is remembered. St. Martin was a Roman soldier who was station near Gaul. As legend goes St. Martin rode into a town and on the outskirts of the town he ran into a beggar who was only wear rags. He felt pity for the man and cut het cloak in 2 and gave 1 half to the beggar. The next morning when he woke up he found his cloak restored to a full cloak. 

As we are using a Waldorf curriculum for home education, we pay attention to this day.

So we made swede lantarns. We hollowed out the swedes, carved some shapes into the swedes and put a tea light into it, as you can see below. From the insides of the swedes I made swede soup.  I served the swede soup with roasted chestnuts for dinner. This is a traditional dinner for Martinmas.

In some European areas, such as parts of The Netherlands and Germany children go past the houses to sing Martinmas songs and will get sweets. It is very similar to trick or treating at Halloween.
Now that we live in England Halloween is what is happening, so we only do some stuff at home for Martinmas.