Feast Day of St. Joachim and St. Anne

From Mary Reed Newland’s “The Year and Our Children”

St. Anne is the patroness of old clothes dealers, seamstresses, laceworkes, housekeeprs, carpenters, turners, cabinetmakers, stablemen, and broommakers, and she is invoked against poverty and to find lost objects. Although the martyrology doesn’t say so, she must be the patronness of Grandmothers, and we love her for that because she we could never get along without our grandmothers. The children love to recall that if she was still tehre when the Christ Child learned to talk, He called her Grandmother. The nicest of her symbols we think is a cradle with the infant Virgin Mary in it.

We think the best way to honor the feast of St. Joachim and St. Anne is to do something lovely for grandparents. Little girls might dress their best dolls as the tiny Mary this day and lay them in flower bedecked cradles.

Grandma and Izzy! Happy feast day!