4 Easy Steps to Planning a St. Joseph's Day Feast

I was asked recently for a step-by-step of how I organize liturgical year gatherings. So, today, I am sharing the simple process that friends and I went through to pull together what turned out to be a fun and faith-filled St. Joseph's Table last year.

The Solemnity of St. Joseph is coming up on March 19 - a perfect day for getting together with friends to pray, eat, and observe this special day of the liturgical year through enjoying a St. Joseph Table - and a time you don't need to sweat the prep.

Trust me on this!  

You can delight in a fabulous feast day celebration as a family or with friends with very little advanced planning. 

In fact, last year, friends and I put together our St. Joseph table with but 24 hours advanced notice!

Three tiers represent the trinity.

A white tablecloth represents the pure love of God

Fish remind us of the apostles.

Fruits and vegetables remind us of the abundant harvest that was shared after a drought when the first St Joseph table happened.

Pasta with "sawdust" reminds us of St.  Joseph and
beans recall the fava beans that people ate during the period of having no food before they prayed for St. Joseph to intercede and the rains and harvest came.

Cupcakes bring cheer with their special toppers.

Flowers should be lilies for St. Joseph, but, instead, are just what we had.

Cookies and fruit make a flowering St. Joseph staff of St. Joseph.

More pastries and savory dishes were added as more families arrived.

How did we do it?

We used four easy steps you can follow:

1 - Get Word Out that You'd Like to Enjoy a St. Joseph Table

Of course, if you plan to celebrate St. Joseph's day as a family only, you can skip this step.  However, if you'd like to enjoy a St. Joseph Table with friends, getting word out is your first step.

In the past, I have personally invited friends to my home or secured a host family and planned a group St. Joseph Table with plenty of advanced notice.  That is, until last year, when I found myself posting the following in a local Catholic Facebook group on March 18:

LAST-MINUTE ST. JOSEPH'S TABLE GATHERING ANYONE: I got behind in life and failed to suggest this earlier, but am throwing it out today in case anyone would be up for an impromptu gathering.

Tomorrow is St. Joseph's Feast day. Would anyone like to host a POTLUCK St. Joseph's feast day table anytime from 4 p.m. forward? If so, give a shout here in a comment with time and location, and others who'd like to go, comment with what you'll bring.

I can provide the a white table cloth and 3 tiers for the table, a candle, a gluten-free, casein-free "sawdust pasta" dish inspired by tradition as well as some sort of "flowering staff" (though not my usual one as I could not find the cookies this year) and perhaps some other things. I just cannot manage to provide the hosting location right now. 

 

Within an hour, someone responded with an offer to host!

You could do similarly - getting word out via Facebook, texts, phone calls, emails, or just chatting with friends.

2 - Set a Time and Location, Making It an Official Event for Your St. Joseph Table

Once we had a host location and time, we made our St Joseph Table event "official" by creating a Facebook event page and inviting all the local Catholic homeschoolers we knew.

If you do not use Facebook, you could use a free planning tool such as Perfect Potluck or just go with good old fashioned phone calls and face-to-face chats to make official invitations.

3 - Share Ideas and Resources to Get Guests Excited and Thinking about What They Might Add to the Feast

While some of our invited guests were already familiar with St. Joseph Tables from past celebrations, others were brand new to the idea.  So, my next step was to shard the following ideas and links with our guests.

(Note: The photos were not part of what I shared as ideas and links, but, rather, examples of how people responded.  Each photo is something that was brought to lay on our table. Yum!)

Find pictures, explanations and links of some of our past St. Joseph Tables at our 1st St. Joseph's Table, Our 2nd and 3rd, our 4th, and our 5th.

If you do not know much about St. Joseph's Tables, here is a great explanation! 

A Slice of Smith Life has shared about her beautiful table, which is inspiring! 

Catholic Cuisine offers wonderful recipes and more! 

Some things that could flesh our our table if you'd like to bring them are:

• flowers, particular lilies
• a St. Joseph statue or peg doll
• oranges (traditionally given to children on this day)

 

• St. Joseph prayer cards (mine are missing)
• any great St. Joseph story you have 

• traditional breads (or cut outs of fig newtons or gluten-free tortillas) in symbolic shapes, such as lilies, sandals, ladders, saws, hammers, nails, beards, ladders, canes or staffs of St. Joseph, crosses, palms, wreaths symbolizing Jesus, artichokes, grapes, and twists

 

• grapes or other fruit and vegetables, symbolic of an abundant harvest shared

 

• beans (Fava beans are traditional, but any can do!) 

 

• 12 whole fish (to represent the twelve apostles or the miracle of loaves and fishes; or one, if that's all you can manage: tuna, sardines, white fish, whatever....shellfish and seafood, particularly Baked Red Snapper are often traditional)

 

• pastries, and possibly symbolic pastries with fig in the following shapes: Monstrance, chalice, cross, dove, lambs, fish, Bible, and hearts. (GFCF fig newton-like cookies are an easy one to shape!)

 

• Pupaculova: bread baked with dyed Easter eggs reminding of the close approach of Easter (or just any festive pastry)

 

• grapes, olive oil,olive salad, and dried figs: which are reminders of vineyards and orchards of Sicily
• Pignolatti: fried pastry in pine cone shapes, reminders of the pine cones Jesus played with as a child. 

 

• Mudica: Pasta Milanese with browned and seasoned bread crumbs sprinkled on top to represent the sawdust of St. Joseph, the carpenter - or a GF version

 

• a fruit or veggie Italian flag (green-white-red) 

• fruit in a serving dish (to remind us that saying "yes" like St. Joseph brings fruit to our lives

• wine (traditional and reminds us of the Miracle of Cana) 

• no meat 

As you can see from the photos above, the ideas shared offered plenty of visuals, background information, and recipes for each participating family to be able to think of something to gather, make, or buy to bring to our table.

Feel free to simply copy and paste this idea list for your guests!

4 - Leave the Rest to the Holy Spirit 

Once the ideas were shared, we left the rest of our planning up to how the Holy Spirit moved each family and simply trusted that those who were able to make it would bring enough food for a beautiful and filling table and that we would all be blessed by a time filled with faith, friendship, fun, and, of course, feasting.  

We were not disappointed!

We actually ended up with more food than the table we had set up could hold...

... and learning more about the feast day.

Granted, as the person leading the "teaching" portion of our celebration, I had forgotten to get my favorite St. Joseph book - Joseph's Story by Patricia Pingry  - out of our library in time, and also was not able to unbury both of our copies of Prayers to My Favorite Saints and Prayers to the Saints before we left for the gathering, but I was still able to use print outs from some of the links above, a saint book, and the children's background knowledge - plus God's grace! -  to offer a decent chat anyway.

Everyone, then, was able to focus on praying and a chat about St. Joseph and the history and traditions of his feast day.

Then, the children enacted Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the saints, and angels coming to the table...

...before digging in!

Then, everyone chatted and played right through when it was past-time to go home.

Truly, our St.Joseph's Table gathering was a blessed and beautiful time - all coming together in 24 hours.

If you'd like to put together a St. Joseph Table this year, then, take our testimony as proof: Enjoying a St. Joseph Table with friends does not have to be a huge, time-consuming undertaking.  It can come together quickly and meaningfully.

We encourage you to give it a try!

Need More Ideas and Inspiration for Celebrating St. Joseph's Feast Day?

This year will mark the sixth anniversary of when my children and I began partaking in the tradition of a St. Joseph Table.

In the past, I have shared about each of our tables, including pictures of what we ate, descriptions of our activities, and links to specific books, prayers, and resources.

Come now, and take a walk with us down Memory Lane...

Our First St. Joseph's Table

Our first St. Joseph Table was super simple - and super fun to share with friends.  It included coloring and a construction-themed playdate!

Our 2nd and 3rd St. Joseph Tables

Our second St. Joseph table was even simpler and celebrated as a family breakfast while our third began to get a little bigger and included a playdate with prayer, drawing, crafting, and more.

Our 4th Included Prayers, Crafts, and More

Our fourth was one of my favorites! A friend hosted it, and we were able to involve whole families - even Dad's - in plenty of prayer, crafting, and eating!

Our 5th Brought Fond Memories, Too

Our fifth was filled with delightful dishes and good company! 

And, our sixth, as I already explained was a fine example of the Holy Spirit helping last-minute preparation turn into a lovely time honoring the Solemnity of St. Joseph with friends.

We hope this walk down memory lane provides you with plenty of inspiration for beginning, reviving, or sustaining your own St. Joseph Table traditions.  

St. Joseph, pray for us!