Living faith traditions as a family

Christmas is a time for traditions. Some families like to gather at the grandparents every year for a big dinner with the whole extended family, while others will watch together the same movie every year. Some families will pray together a certain number of evenings before Christmas, and others will help in charity events every December. The traditions will vary from family to family, but they most certainly will be there.

Catherine McLoughlin, a social media coordinator for a Catholic diocese in England, and her husband James McLoughlin, Youth Ministry Director for the Diocese of Clogher, live in Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh with their three children, three boys, Michael is five, Patrick is two and Andrew is a bit over six months. They share their Catholic faith traditions with their children, not only during the Christmas period, but all year round.

“As a family, obviously, weekly we go to Sunday Mass. We have a children’s liturgy in our parish,” Mrs McLoughlin told The Irish Catholic. “Our oldest, Michael, who is five started going [to it].” However, their faith sharing is not limited to activities outside the house. Every night they pray together as a family before bedtime, and then individually with each child as they are being put to bed.

Elements

Mrs McLoughlin explained they include different elements to their daily prayers, “depending on the saint of the day or [if] something else exciting is happening… During May, we had a nice little May Altar in one of our bookshelves.”

She said they were “looking forward to Advent” to have themed decorations and prayers with their children. “It’s kind of seasonal, [we] make sure that we have our Nativity sets out and ready.” The McLoughlin do not decorate lightly, “we try to be intentional when decorating our house. [To] have our faith in obvious amongst the mess of daily life.”

To Mrs McLoughlin, it is really important to share and teach their faith with their children, “mainly because that’s what I received as a child and it’s a precious gift that I have because of my own family. To be able to share that with our sons is very important to me. But it’s important to them as well, that they know individually that they are so important to Jesus and God.”

Other family tradition the McLoughlin family practice involves attending family anniversary Masses in her old parish in England. “My mam and dad still live in England, so going to my old parish church” is something they do a few times annually as a family.

They are “trying to teach up [that] the links to your faith isn’t just here where we live, but also wherever we go, if we’ve ever been on holidays over the weekend, [we] make sure that we go to Mass, when we pass [by] a church, [we] make the sign of the cross.”

The main Catholic value, Mrs McLoughlin believes is the most important to pass on to her children is generosity. She mentioned that this is one of the best values her husband shows, “and being generous not only with time but with the things that we have. Our money and how we share with the Church and with the community. I think that’s probably the most important. We can give back, particularly to our parish and we’ve been trying.

Now that we are approaching Christmas, it’s very important to teach the children how to share, how to give”

“We have been intentional with [our] sharing. Sharing our own gifts with the parish. I run the parish Facebook page, and we have a baby and mother prayer group.”

“After my third [son] was born, we haven’t found the time,” to give as much as they want. However, they try to give back to the parish with their “talents” and “gifts” as well as “monetary things”. “Generosity [is] really how we give back to the community, but particularly the parish community.”

“Now that we are approaching Christmas, it’s very important to teach the children how to share, how to give,” Mrs McLoughlin said. “Generally, through talking about it [the faith] in everyday conversations,” Mrs McLoughlin said, they teach their children “that [faith] isn’t just a Sunday thing, it’s everyday.”