Yuletide and Christmas: St. Boniface and "The Holly and the Ivy"
Dear friends, These links and information are for the students in our home school co-op's 5th-6th grade English class. They are learning about medieval life in their history class, so I am trying to customize some of their literature selections to complement that. This week, at the start of Advent, we are learning how the Druids (pagans who practiced child sacrifice and a lot of superstition) came to accept Christianity, and how their existing winter solstice traditions were adapted to express the glad Christmas tidings of Jesus. "How St. Boniface Kept Christmas Eve" is from the vintage book American Normal Readers, Book 5. Print pages 212-227. This will show up as numbers 207-222 on the book pages. You can also find "Yuletide Customs" in the same online book. Print pages 200-202, which will show up as 195-197 on the book pages. Questions: In what year did this story take place? How many years ago was this? The first paragraph of the story descri...