Celebrating St. David's Day

It's been a while since the kids and I learned about a new saint.  So when I discovered that we were free of all outside commitments last Sunday (February 24), I decided it would be fun to learn more about St. David, whose feast day is celebrated on March 1.


We started by reading a book about St. David. There aren't too many of them in the marketplace but we found this one:

It's a nice little book, just 22 pages long, which includes legends about David and a prayer inspired by him.  St. David is the patron saint of Wales, so the book also includes a two page spread on how the feast day is celebrated in Wales. (Incidentally, I picked up a copy inexpensively on eBay; the prices listed on Amazon are rather crazy!)


We also checked out a few websites about St. David, including this short biography of him on American Catholic.org, this page on New Advent, this page on SQPN.com, this page from the National Museum of Wales website and this page from the Visit Wales tourism website.

I thought it would be fun to watch a movie about the country of Wales. Unfortunately, our library didn't have anything.  My Amazon Prime membership came in handy, however!  Amazon Prime has quite a few free travel videos for streaming, including at least five on Wales.   We picked the 26 minute Passport to Adventure: The Magical Country of Wales.

Through our research, we learned that the national emblem of  Wales is the leek, and that many Welsh people pin a leek stalk to their lapels on this day.  I  was very unfamiliar with leeks but decided to make this delicious Leek Potato Soup. It will become a favorite no-meat meal for Lent! 




Wales' national flower is a daffodil. Since it was Sunday, I made and served this daffodil angel food cake:




The inside is yellow and white. I added a couple drops of yellow food coloring to half the cake mix, then alternately dropped spoonfuls of yellow and white cake mix into the cake pan.




It was a fun surprise when we cut the cake!




I frosted the cake with pre-made vanilla frosting, to which I added a drop of lemon flavoring.
I'm no cake decorator (as you will see) but I decided to try making daffodils with the fondant that's been sitting in the cupboard for a while.




I colored the fondant and rolled it out. I used a mini cutter to make flower petals:








To make the flower's cup I finger rolled tube shapes, cut them into smaller pieces and used a chopstick to make an opening in the cup:




But I didn't really like the look so I took small rectangular shapes and rolled them "jelly roll style". I liked this effect better.








It was a tiny bit time consuming to make those little daffodils, but it added a special touch to the cake.  I might make a similar cake for Easter since out of town guests will be celebrating with us.

I also considered doing one or two simple daffodil or St. David inspired crafts, like the ones I saw at the DLTK-Kids website and the Activity Village website, but we ran out of time. Perhaps next year!

It was a fun, relatively easy way to learn more about another Catholic saint.

Do you celebrate lesser known saints' days?  If so, which days?  How do you celebrate them?