What's in a Name Day?

We Orthodox are pretty big on naming our children for saints, and celebrating the child's feast day every year.  Yesterday was St. George Day, the feast day of my late husband, his father and both his brothers, as well as my dearly loved cousin.  I prayed for them in particular yesterday, though I pray for all of them every day, and I prayed that St. George the Great Martyr would have mercy on them and intercede on their behalf to our Lord.

When we first married, we didn't do a lot with name days, mostly because I didn't make it happen.  I knew my middle name was Marie and that my mother had named me for the Virgin Mary, but I really didn't know when her feast day was.  As I began to grow in faith and cycled through several church years, I found that there were multiple days dedicated to the Mother of God, and all I had to do was to choose one.  So I did.  I chose the Annunciation which had great personal resonance and meaning for me.  Jerry already knew about his patron, Saint George, and all that was left was to figure out how to celebrate our saint days.

When it was just the two of us, we mostly ate a festive meal chosen by the honoree and wished each other a happy Name Day, but when my parents came to stay for lengthy periods, it seemed more fun to make them feel more special on their special day.  I bought a fire engine red dinner plate and painted, "You Are Special" around the rim. We used this plate to honor name days, birthdays, anniversaries, as well as good doctor visits, no cavities, and anything else that deserved celebration. The honoree still got to choose the dinner, and that is how I ended up making poutine rapee for my Dad one year. He didn't think I could make it, but I did, and they were delicious. (For those who are not Acadian French, poutine rapee are basically snowball sized dumplings made of rasped potatoes with a bacon and salt pork center.  They are boiled, served hot, and eaten with sugar, molasses or maple syrup.  Hey, don't knock it till you've tried it!)  My Dad loved them and ate them often as a child in Canada, so I made them. Somewhere, I have photo of his happily surprised face when I brought out a platter piled high! Moment's like that are priceless.

I tried to learn about the saints, to get to know them better. As an iconographer, I find the lives of saints endlessly fascinating and inspiring, so this was not a chore.  When our baby came into our lives, we wanted to raise her with a sense of the various cycles of the church year, and so we spent a lot of time teaching her about saints and name days and a lot of what we tend to call traditions with a little "t".  This built up a sense of anticipation in her, and honestly, her childlike wonder and excitement was infectious!  We celebrated everyone's name day: Jerry's patron is St. George, mine is the Theotokos and the Annunciation, Elizabeth's is St. Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist, my mother's is St. Helen the Equal to the Apostles and my father's is St. Joseph the Betrothed. My child grew up praying to her patron saint to protect her and intercede to Christ on her behalf. She prayed to St. Elizabeth and St. Helen, both.  As time went on, it became apparent that St. John of San Francisco had a special relationship with her, that he chose her, really, so we celebrated his day as well.

I think that St. John of San Francisco is responsible for many miracles, big and small, in our family, and in the life of my daughter, in particular.  Just last summer, she and I were discussing whether we should acknowledge him as the patron of our family.  This is a Serbian custom - the family Slava. In Serbia, many people are not named after a saint and do not have an individual patron saint, but the entire family has a patron saint which is celebrated from generation to generation. The saint is usually the saint of the day on which the family became Orthodox Christians. Christianity came to Serbia in the first century, and Orthodox Christianity became the official religion in the 800s.  That's a lot of celebrating!

My Serbian friend, Ariane posts pictures of her Slava on Facebook every year. Her brother comes to visit, her husband stays home from work, her kids and her mother are there.  They cook fabulous, traditional Serbian food for days, and invite the Serbian priest to celebrate the traditional liturgical service, which includes the rotating and breaking of the slava bread in the presence of the icon of the patron saint. She has little kids and they are growing up with a richness of faith and a rootedness in tradition and culture that will serve them well when they grow up and question everything. Those memories will be in their bones, and that's what will bring them back, as it brought my daughter back.  Those memories -- and the prayers of their beloved and close friends, their heavenly patron saints.

Parents of young ones, celebrate your child's name day! Make a big deal of it! Make sure your child learns all about his or her patron saint. Hold that saint up as a model of holiness to be emulated. Take your child to church on his name day.  Have the priest and people sing Many Years for your child on his name day. Plan ahead - think about the traditions you want to build and then be consistent from year to year.

As the parent of a child who went through years of questioning, but who found that the call of the church to her could not be denied, and she returned, I can tell you that what you do in your home while your children are little affects them as adults and informs many of their choices later in life.  It's hard to fit in another family celebration in between all the meetings and soccer games and dance lessons, I know, but trust me when I say that you will not be sorry in the long run.

Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6

What's in a Name Day, indeed!