Thank you all so much for your responses to my reader survey! Almost 1500 of you took the time to fill it out. It’s been really interesting to see the results, and to read all your kind feedback. Just ONE story of this blog being a part of a conversion or a deepening of someone’s faith or a consolation in a season of crazy motherhood would make writing the blog worth it, but there were HUNDREDS! You guys better stop or you’re going to make me rust.
You are welcome to participate in the survey still, and I’ll see your answers, but I’m going to call it on the giveaway and award the set of
to lucky email number 381 (as selected by google’s random number generator): Annie! Annie, I sent you an email!
- As expected, my readers are 99% female.
- Half of you are 25-34, nearly all the rest are 35-55.
- 90% of you are American, but that other 10% is spread all over the globe, with every region represented. (And one write in for Texas! 😁)
- 90% are Catholic or working on it, 10% are not Catholic (and very welcome!)
- 56% of you have 3 or more kids (true of only 38% of the rest of the mothers in this country)
- The 60% of you who have school-aged kids are pretty evenly split between homeschooling, brick and mortar Catholic schools, and brick and mortar public schools.
- 10% of you are new since George, 50% of you have been around since Mary Jane, and 40% of you have been around all the way since Lulu.
- 70% of you are on Facebook, which used to be SUCH a great way for me to reach you, and is now less great. Only a fraction of people who follow Catholic All Year on Facebook see my posts these days. There’s always hand-wringing in the blogger community when algorithms change, but this is the first one that really noticeably affected my numbers. Still, I can’t quit it. The immediate interaction is so convenient.
- About 40% of you are getting the posts via email or a feed reader, which means YOU get ALL the posts. 👍 You can sign up for emails in the sidebar right there 👉
- You definitely want me to write blog posts and you especially want notice ahead of time on upcoming feast days, and random kid stuff. You want parenting posts, you want to see Gramblewood, and you want book, TV, and movie recommendations.
- So many of you have the Confession book, and the wall calendar, which really makes me happy, because *I* also have and use them for my family.
- And over 70% of you are planning to get the Catholic All Year Compendium when it comes out in the fall!
- A liturgical year prayer book and a liturgical year recipe book were the big winners for favorite new project ideas, but almost 15% of you did not hate my leggings idea, for which I thank you. 😘
A full 75% of you want some notice on saints’ days celebrations. Here’s me ignoring that advice and telling you that TODAY is the Feast of St. Mark: scribe, evangelist, naked guy in the Bible.
Wait. What?
It’s true. St. Mark’s gospel features the description of a young man who, after Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, ended up fleeing the scene in his altogether. He’s known as “the naked fugitive” (don’t google that) and is considered by Bible historians to be the evangelist himself. 🍑👈🙈 (See Mk 14:48-52.)
Unrelated to St. Mark, April 25th is also the Major Rogation Day, traditionally a day of abstinence from meat as a sacrifice offered for the intention of a successful harvest. See more on Rogation Days in this post:
ROGATION AND EMBER DAYS AND VIGILS: IN CASE YOU WERE STARTING TO THINK YOU HAD THIS LITURGICAL LIVING THING DOWN
St. Mark’s symbol is a winged lion, and he is the patron saint of Venice. I picked up two cheese pizzas from Aldi for dinner tonight, and red, yellow, and orange bell peppers to slice and arrange into a mane. Olive eyes, pineapple chunk nose, boom, it’s a lion. A meat-free lion. (🐦🐦💎)
April 28th is the Feast of St. Gianna Molla. For us, it’s also the anniversary of the day we spent in the hospital with Frankie last year after he was javelined in the head with a pvc pipe and ended up seizing and unresponsive with a fractured skull. His favorite part of that experience was the jello. So, I figure we’ll have jello here to celebrate. And one can only assume that St. Gianna made a mean lasagna, so that’s what I’m going to attempt.
See you again soon!
I had no idea today was a Rogation Day…that's unfortunate, since it's also my oldest's birthday, and he requested ham for dinner, and I made a huge cake (you only turn 18 once!). I figure since we do meat-free Fridays all year round, he sacrifices enough. He's a carnivore at heart.
Thank you! I think our oldest sons are kindred spirits. I saw Jack's comment on your video about Rogation Days, and that's exactly something my oldest would say: "I'm not saying you made them up, I'm just saying nobody has ever heard of them." Classic.
Interestingly, Jimmy Akin recently posited that it is Lazarus who ran off naked. He has some pretty convincing arguments. Nonetheless, happy feast of St. Mark (maybe he'd appreciate if we cleared him on this đ ). http://jimmyakin.com/2018/03/secret-identities-in-the-gospel-of-mark-and-more-live-stream.html
Ooh, interesting. The plot thickens!
Today after Mass we had a procession with the major litanies, and blessings for the land facing North, South, East and West. It was beautiful.
We didn't go meatless today. I made risi e bisi, which I read was traditionally served to the Doge in Venice on the Feast of St. Mark. But my kids were not fans AT.ALL! So it was fairly penantential anyway.
I had a suggestion that I didn't think of until several days after the survey…. I love your Annunciation leggings but personally I can't pull them off (thunder thighs). If you end up selling something similar, would you consider stained-glass maxi skirts? I have several that are of a fabric that seems to be very similar to what leggings are made of.
That is a very fun idea!
I also vote in favor of the stained glass maxi skirt. I'm belong to the can't pull of leggings party and think it's a great idea!